We went on Wednesday, back on Sunday. Went on the Eurostar, lovely thing! Takes 2 hours to take you from Central London to Central Brussels. Via France. Amazing.
Brussels was cool. A lot of what to do is based on food, drink, and chocolate. Belgian chocolate being very famous. Oh and their favourite dish is "Moules et Frites" - Mussels and Chips! Really good thati s.
Best thing is that the country speaks French and German. So everything is double - road signs, menus, announcements, train stations. Everything.
The city itself is a curious mix of West and East. It's as if Western Europe and Eastern Europe had a child. It's like Paris mixed in with Prague. Prague being the coolest of course ;)
Finally, it's also the home of comics. Smurfs, TinTin etc. All Belgian. Which is why they have things in the street like the one in the picture :o)
I've just finished BioShock, seeing one of the possible two endings. Forget it's a great FPS, forget the graphics and audio are just SUPERB, forget all of that.
What it REALLY is, is a GREAT GREAT GREAT story. Crash-landing in the middle of the sea, you find Rapture, an underwater utopia, created by someone called Andrew Ryan. You also find that it's gone to hell. A guy called Atlas guides you around Rapture while you uncover its secrets.
No, there are no cut-scenes. No fancy CGI or rendered video (bar the beginning and end), nothing. The game tells its story via the environment: the posters around the city, the advertisements over the public broadcast system, the tape recordings you find, and the things you stumble upon, be it a flat full of corpses or a room full of women hanging from their necks, it's all very atmospheric. And creepy.
But, best of all, is the twists and turns in the story. To mention one little thing would be to ruin the whole experience. BioShock is game that has some brilliant twists, not only in story telling, but in gameplay also. By the last level you'll just be wondering how anything (or anybody) will ever surpass this level of excellency in any video game. But of course, we said that about Half Life 2 years ago, and now BioShock is beyond that.
Great to play, great to see, great to listen to, and a great story. This is videogaming at its very best. The new best FPS ever created? I think so.
If you really count yourself a gamer, then you have to play BioShock. Its not a game-its a benchmark. A piece of history that we're lucky to witness.
I'm off to London today, to meet up with Zzz (Ziad). He's here from Dubai again, for a week or so to attend something called PLASA.
Will be in London till Thursday.
SoB out.
PS: BioShock is one of the best games ever created. Really is. It's like a great movie, book, and game wrapped up in one astounding package. If you can, play it. It would be criminal not to.
Apple today announced the new iPod Touch. Essentially an iPhone WITHOUT the phone. Yes you can listen to music, watch videos, AND browse the net via Wi-Fi (yes! a Wi-Fi iPod!). And yes the screen is multitouch and you can tilt it to see things in widescreen.
Good idea? I'm sure it is - not everyone wants a contract iPhone, but I'm sure this christmas EVERYONE wants the new, sexy, touchy iPod.
To celebrate the 12th anniversary of the original Command and Conquer release (31/08/95. Was it REALLY 12 years ago!!!) EA (Westwood) have put up for download the original game for free on the C&C website.
The version is "Gold", which is Windows XP compatible (not sure if it's vista) and includes 2 iso files, one for the GDI and one for The Brotherhood of NOD.
In case you haven't played them, haven't already pirated them, or you're just bored on a Saturday morning, grab them from here.
Bullshot: A screenshot that's been edited, usually Photoshopped.
Photoshop: Am not gonna bother explaining what this is. If you don't know, you're on the wrong blog :p
Now, some game publishers have been known to send out Bullshots every now and then. Just a few "little" changes, to make the game look a bit better, or shinier, etc etc.
EA recently sent out this "screenshot" of their upcoming NBA 08 title. But, it most definitely is a Bullshot. Why? Have a good look at it (click to enlarge) and tell me if you've spotted it.
If you can't see it, I've put the answer in the comments ;)
I have just finished playing the Bioshock demo. Out on Xbox Live this am, the servers were so hammered that it took me 13 hours to download the 1.35gig demo, something that normally takes about 40 minutes.
And man was it worth it! Bioshock is a shooter, a FPS to be exact. Bringing nothing new to the table whatsoever: Guns, Magic (or genetics as it calls it), even hacking devices and turrets is old territory. What it does have though is AMAZING atmosphere! It recreates a 60's utopia like nothing before it, really giving the underwater city a feeling that it was once a great place. Now turned in to hell. Everything has character, every single detail in the game has been meticulously crafted. And nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has been overlooked. I spent ages reading the posters and adverts from when people lived in Rapture.
Add to that the great graphics (Unreal Engine 3), and really good sound (period music, freaky sounds, conversations overheard, people muttering to themselves, and of course the "little sisters" babbling or singing nursery rhymes while they suck the blood out of a corpse-all VERY unsettling!) and this is a game that has the potential of being the best shooter, setting a landmark for all future games.
Half Life 2 move over. Your time as best FPS is over. Bioshock is here to stay.
Full game out 24/08/07 (PC/360). Get it. You owe it to yourselves.
I was doing my usual web trawl just now, and someone on a forum had posted about YouGamers. A site owned by Futuremark, YouGamers looks like a clumsy run-of-the-mill gaming site, with the usual news/previews etc etc.
What makes it very unique (and useful) is that it focuses on PC gaming, and contains something called the Game-O-Meter. A Futuremark ActiveX plugin that measures your system and compares it to a game's minimum specs, and recommended specs.
Very useful stuff, all you gotta do is find a game, and then check your system. If you're doing it for the first time you'll have to let Explorer install the ActiveX plugin, otherwise after under a minute you'll get a metre showing you how your system compares to the game. Clever.
Leaked from MS, 2 hotfixes are now available for Vista. Mind you, you can't get them through Windows Update, but you'll have to download them yourselves from MS.
The first is a "performance fix", which does lots of nonsecurity related bug squashes, one of which apparantly resolves a video-game crashing thingie. The other is a "reliability fix", whatever that means.
Most importantly though, the damn bug that let Vista take ages copying a file from one volume to another while it was "Calculating time remaining" has been fixed! To copy a small file to a USB pen for example would stall while it was calculating, now this has FINALLY been sorted. And yes, I've tried it and it's all fine now!!
Somehow yesterday we managed to set a world breaking FIVE (!!) players all together in Quake 3.
Yes, that's right, me, Haniboy, Nile Warp, Blue Blood, and Fuji all got together for a fragfest.
To celebrate that we all managed to get connected first time around (miracle?!) we did a little totem-pole. Fuji at the base, SoB in the middle, and Nile in the COOLEST pose you'll ever see in a Quake game.
In anticipation of going to watch The Simpsons Movie tomorrow (Cant' wait!!! Got my Simpsons T-shirt and socks ready!), I was checking out www.simpsonsmovie.com and found an avater creator there.
I am missing my 360 terribly. There's something wrong with it not being there. I think the community surrounding it is amazing, and nothing else has replaced it.
Hence I miss live, and I miss playing football with Hani :)
Anyhow. I bought a motherboard from the states that was treated so that the red light thing doesn't happen. Good price too. I forgot to ask what region it was though! I got the dreaded reply yesterday: it's American. So all my PAL games are useless. FUCK.
I was going to stick with it and just "obtain" the American versions of the games I play most, but that means one problem: I can't play PES6 with hani. Kind of defeats the purpose.
So, I've ordered YET ANOTHER motherboard. This one is PAL and brand new.
To try and minimise the stupid Red Light problem, I also bought some replacement fans for the crappy internal fans from Divineo. The Talismoon Whisper Fans are meant to be 58% better, and 7% quieter.
All this stuff is arriving Wednesday. I should be back on live then.
The American motherboard is going straight back on eBay.
Finally, if this new setup Red lights I will just ditch it all and buy a brand new 360 and leave it CLOSED. It's not worth openning them up and losing the warranty, especially now that it's 3 years.
is the new album by those clever folk at The Chemical Brothers.
It's been out for some time now, and I've listened to it to death. It's one of those few albums were I don't skip too many tracks (one to be precise, the awful "The Salmon Song").
We Are The Night is the 5th album by The Chems, sixth if you count Exit Planet Dust (They were called The Dust Brothers then). Proving to be much more of an integrated experience than their last 2 albums (Come With Us was awful, Push The Button had a few great tracks).
With this album, the Chems take you on a dance music journey, from their own nearly-patented big beat style (sometimes called chemical beat), to 80s electronica, then over to a bit of trance/techno, back to some indie, with a little bit of Daft Punk, Death in Vegas, and Lemonjelly all thrown in for good measure.
It all sounds too wrong to work, but it does. They somehow manage to make every song feel like a Chemical song, either by throwing in a huge sequence here or there, or adding some psychedelic beeps and noises, you never lose the feeling that this is The Chemical Brothers. At their best.
The famous last epic track that all their albums have had is still there. This time it's called "The Pills Won't Help You" and it features someone called midlake on vocals. Admittedly, it's a lot more mellowed than their previous epics, and to me is no where near the stellar hights of "Surface to Air", nor even "The Sunshine Underground" or "The Private Psychedelic Reel" from their previous albums.
But that doesn't stop this album from being my favourite Chems album. Nothing could surpass the excellent Surrender, but this has. It's more complete, more modern, and amazing to listen to. Whether it will age as well as it's big brother, only time will tell. But for now, it's great.
Finally, some tracks worth mentioning:
Saturate: I'm sure to make this they got some child with a keyboard to press some keys. Repeat over and over but keep on adding layers. Very catchy beat.
Do It Again: by now EVERYONE should have heard this, or seen it's video, particularly arabs as the video is arabic again (like push the button). Stupid song at first, that then becomes your favourite cos it's so damn genius. In fact, video embedded at the end :)
Das Spiegel: The funkiest, happiest, greatest track they have ever made. A bit of lemonjelly, a bit of chemical, and lots of funky beats and sequences make this the funnest thing you'll hear this year.
Burst Generator: Pure chemical techno.
A Modern Midnight Conversation: ah, cowbells, lovely lady vocals, big beats. I could imagine them remembering their favourite bits from Electronic 80s and coming up with this track.
As you see, I like it. And so should you if you're reading this blog :)
As you all know, vista has this stupid habit of prompting you every now and then that it needs your permission to do something (that is if you've got UAC enabled, which is default and recommended). It's a feature they've copied off OSX, the difference being that the OSX one actually does protect (it prompts you for a password each time a file that is owned by "system" is accessed, which should never happen. Hence OSX = no viruses :D).
Windows UAC on the other hand, protects the computer from THE USER, making sure that when they're gonna do something potentially harmful, it asks for their permission first. Heh.
But someone clever has created TweakUAC. A program that lets you switch UAC in to "quiet" mode. Meaning that it keeps UAC on, but just doesn't keep popping up to annoy you.
And yes the creator has explained why your system will stay just as secure.
Try it out, and be thankful, it really makes life so much easier.
Yes that's right. Today the 360 died after crashing a few times. It now refuses to boot and displays the dreaded "Three Rings of Death" pictured to your left.
Gotta fix it, will take ages I think. Shame really. PS3/2 gaming and Wii for now I guess....
Today we finished Shadow Of The Colossus. One of the 5 or so games that I wish I had a PS2 for. Now that I got a PS3, I'm playing through them. Colossus is an amazing feat. Not because it's so original, or because the Colossi are beautiful creatures that are huge, but because of the way it presents itself, and the way it tells its story.
The game starts off with you carrying a dead girl in to some sacred place. A voice from above tells you to go and kill 16 Colossi, after which she'll be resurrected. And that's about all you get to know. The game is about you, your horse, and the huge environment in which you've got to find the Colossi, and try to beat them.
Each battle is a huge task in trying to work out how a single human, armed with nothing more than a sword and bow, can down the beast. Our hero isn't that agile either, he's no Kratos or Lara, he stumbles around, has limited breath and grip, and doesn't bounce up when falls. All this adds to some really tense, nail biting moments of sheer clinging on to huge beasts and hoping you don't get flung off.
One by one the creatures fall, and after you kill the 16th Colossus the game truely shines, mainly because it has the most breath taking end sequence of any memorable game. Revealing a lot about the story, who you are and what you've really done, and ending in a very thought provoking and clever way, you finish the game both upset that you've finished it, and amazed at the story it was telling without you knowing it.
The whole isolation and emptiness you feel as you go hunting the Colossi one by one, and the lack of any story or cutscenes (very few in game) before the climatic end are all forgivable when you finish, as it's clear that the creators of the game wanted the player to feel lonely, isolated, and in doubt as to what is really going on. A very clever way of telling a story, and as a videogame a great addition to anyone's list.
If you've not played it and have a PS2/3 I strongly urge you to. If you don't, pick up a used machine and play the game then sell it, it really is a milestone.
Finally, somewhere in the game something terrible happens, something you wouldn't have thought would affect you that much. But when it happens, you can't help but feel very sad at the cruelty of it all, and it's all because of something you do. When you start realising that you've got to do the said thing, you're not sure whether you want to continue playing it or not. It's that powerful.. Pan's Labyrinth of games. GET IT.
I don't really know if I have anything to talk about. It's 01:30 AM on Friday, 29th of June 2007. As it stands, my life is at a stand still, ie boring as hell.
Tim Henman flew out of Wimbledon again today. What a surprise! The man sucks, he really should retire.
I haven't checked my bank balance in ages, am too scared. I'm sure I've over-spent recently. At least we get paid today.
Haitham has gone missing from xbox land. Whereas there was a time where he'd play UNO all day long, he's suddenly disappeared. Hani is still around, and I've found a way to kick his arse in PES6!
I'm addicted to Slitherlink, a very clever puzzle game for NDS.
Which reminds me. I need to get my Slitherlink fix. Later.
I know a lot of you have banged on about this before (Wolf, A13, Fuji) but I finally experienced it this week and finished it just now (30 minutes before starting my last night!!).
As A13 put it, it's so good raises your expectations for all games following it.
Next stop: Shadow of the Colossus, then perhaps Devil May Cry 3 or Ninja Gaiden Sigma whenever that's out.
God of War 2 needs to be done too. But I want to play a few games in between so as not to get bored with it (if that's possible).
On that note, any one seen the bonus video you unlock when finishing God of War? The one that says he had a brother that's gonna raise out of Hades and revenge? Seems like God of War 3 to me.....
Off to fight the uphill struggle that is the last night.
Tonight at 22:00 I start my final batch of 3 nights. Had on OK week off, managed to finish the presentation I needed to do, applied for some jobs, and went to a few places with Kelly. We were at the sea-side yesterday!
Monday I'll be back to my normal Elderly ward to look after the lovely dears.....
I feel I should blog about this, even though it's stupid:
Today me and Kelly went to Chelmsford, a town about 1 hour away from Ipswich. Kelly's university is based there, so she had to hand some stuff in. It also has a good town centre for shopping, so we were also going to get some things from there.
Instead of driving up and going in to the centre and paying a stupid amount of money for parking in the centre, we decided to use the Park & Ride service. An excellent idea if there ever was one, the Park & Ride station is very close to the motorway, you go in to it and park your car for free. You then buy a £2 return bus ticket that takes you to 5 different stops in the town. The buses run frequently every 10 minutes from 7am to 7pm, and if you want to leave after 7pm your ticket is valid on the local buses.
It's all very well organised, very convenient, and the Chelmsford service is only one year old so the buses are all very clean!
That's it, I've said it. I enjoyed the service so much that I had to share it with everyone!
Just like years ago, when id showed their Doom 3 engine at a Mac conference, this year's Apple WWDC (world wide developer conference) was no different! John Carmack was on stage announcing their top-secret new engine, called id Tech 5, complete with a video and all! The engine will be used for a new IP, which they're keeping secret until the Mini-e3 next month. Here's the story from Joystiq, go there for the fuzzy pictures:
Carmack introduced the technology, saying, "So the last couple of years at id we've been working in secrecy on next-gen tech and a game for it ... this is the first time we're showing anything we've done on it publicly." He describes the demo happening on screen: "What we've got here is the entire world with unique textures, 20GB of textures covering this track. They can go in and look at the world and, say, change the color of the mountaintop, or carve their name into the rock. They can change as much as they want on surfaces with no impact on the game."
Carmack finished off the tease saying, "We're going to be showing on a Mac, PC, PS3, and Xbox at E3, we'll have another Mac announcement at E3."
....begin today at 22:00. Four nights, then a week off, then 3 nights. That week off will be spent trying to find a job, and preparing a presentation about a study I did ages ago.
Haven't updated GD in a while cos of lots of crap going on around me, mainly the National UK Doctor's job crisis that I am bang in the middle of. As it stands now, I am unemployed in August.
This has to be the most amazing, beautiful, and awe-inspiring performance I have seen in my life.
In 2005, 21 deaf Chinese youths performed this Thousand-hand Bodhisattva dance live in front of a captivated CCTV Spring Festival Audience. The outstanding choreography, timing, accuracy, costumes, lighting and music really give a great message of hope: if there's love in your heart, One Thousand Hands will be there to help you.
Man oh man! I remember a really funny MAD sketch once about what would happen if famous Video Game Characters were to die. One of them was Pacman, and they said that his funeral will be attended by many people, and his distant relative, The Smiley Face :D
May be that's what inspired this equally mad French artist, who in 2002 created a Pacman Skeleton. It 's freaky to say the least I have a feeling that now this skeleton has been "dug up" :p people are gonna start making more and more impressions of how our favourite characters look like as skeletons. I wonder if Sonic's spikes are bones........
Seeing that Korea has a huge fanbase for the original Starcraft, it's no wonder that they chose Seoul as their venue for WWI
I'm not a fan of RTS, but I know that this is huge news for anyone who plays them, and for PC gamers in general cos Starcraft was a milestone at it's time.
Go here for IGN's coverage of WWI, and for some screenshots of SC2.
UPDATE: Here's the youtube video of the announcement in WWI, listen to the mad fans roar!
Ever since I bought Jetpac Refueled on the 360 Arcade, I've been hellbent on one thing: getting to level 64 (out of 128).
Why?
'cos when you get to level 64, the game gives you a gift: a dashboard theme (sucks), and 2 gamer pictures to use on your profile :D
And the best thing is, you can't buy the pics, you have to play the game and reach level 64 to get them. And I did yesterday! And if you look to your right now, and see my gamer card info, you'll see that my picture is not that of the new-look Jetman, in all his HD glory :D
The other picture is of Sabre Man (of Sabre Wolf fame), but I don't like him as much as this guy.
Refueled, in case you're wondering, is an awesome HD remake of the 1982 Spectrum classic, Jetpac. The original (and it's loading screen!) are including in Refueled.
Just a quick one: I realised that the Armor Jr, as great a case as it is, was just too dark inside. Especially with the one million cables and shit I have in there. So I went to ebuyer and got a VERY CHEAP Blue/Green light for £3.99 (yes, inverters included and all!).
And remember I said I'm going to get that big Logitech keyboard with the LCD, so I can monitor my system. Turns out it can't read abit uGuru data, hence useless to me. So instead of wasting money on that, I found another solution: the uGuru clock. It's an external screen that connects to your mobo directly (via an expansion slot). It displays exactly the same info as the uGuru panel I had to remove. What it lacks though is a backlight, which makes it a bit dim but nontheless very functional.
I've sat it beneath the monitor and can now obsessively make sure the cpu is cool, oh and it tells the time too :p
So many of these things are true, it's NOT EVEN FUNNY! For those over 25er's in the crowd, let me know how well these relate to you :)
SoB - 21 :p
1. You leave clubs before the end to "beat the rush". (worse still you don't go to the clubs)
2. You get more excited about having a roast on a Sunday than going clubbing the night before.
3. You stop dreaming of becoming a professional footballer/basketball player and start dreaming of having a son who might instead.
4. Before throwing the local paper away, you look through the property section.
5. All of a sudden, middle aged people are not 46, they are only 46.
6. Before going out anywhere, you ask whether there is anywhere to park.
7. Rather than throw a knackered pair of trainers out, you keep them because they'll be alright for the DIY or in the garden.
8. You buy T-shirts without anything written on them.
9. Instead of laughing at the innovations catalogue that falls out of the newspaper, you suddenly see both the benefit and money saving properties of most of the things that are in it.
10. You start to worry about your parents' health.
11. You have more disposable income, but everything you want or need to buy costs between 200 and 500 quid.
12. You don't get funny looks when you buy a Disney video or a Wallace And Gromit bubble bath, as the sales assistant assumes they are for your children.
13. Pop music all starts to sound the same.
14. You opt for Pizza Express over Pizza Hut because they do a really nice half-bottle of house red.
15. You always have enough milk in.
16. To compensate for the fact that you have little desire to go clubbing, you instead frequent trendy bars and restaurants in the mistaken belief that you have not turned into your parents.
17. While flicking through the TV channels, you happen upon C4's Time Team with Tony Robinson. You get drawn in. Grand Designs also appeals.
18. The benefits of a pension scheme become clear.
19. You go out of your way to pick up a colour chart from B&Q.
20. You wish you had a shed.
21. You have a shed.
22. You actually find yourself saying "They don't make 'em like that anymore" and "I remember when there were only 4 TV channels" and "Not in my day...."
23. Radio 2 play more songs you know than Radio 1 - and Jeremy Vine has some really interesting guests on.
24. Instead of tutting at old people who take ages to get off the bus, You tut at rowdy school children.
25. When sitting outside a pub you admire their hanging baskets.
26. You find yourself saying "is it cold in here or is it just me
27. You understand the above and forward it to your fellow ageing friends.
I didn't know when I wished that 2007 would be the gaming year (here) that my wish would come true!!
In what can only be explained by The God of Gaming smiling upon us, another good old friend has gotten an Xbox 360, and is online with it!
Yes, that's right, Haitham has gotten one too, despite him being adamant initially thath is PS3 was the only thing that mattered! (he's got a Wii too, so what a collection!). Suddenly one day he called me to say he's getting a 360 because he wants to play Pro Evolution Soccer 6 online!
And sure enough, today, me and him and Hani played online!!! you can only play 1v1 but we did some matches and chatted, and it was AWESOME! The gameplay was smooth as usual, and it was really really great talking and playing to old friends, just like we're in the same room.
Thank you Microsoft for creating the EXCELLENT Xbox 360, which really is player/community centred, and is a joy to use. NOW PLEASE PLEASE add camera support to all games, so then we can play, chat, and see each other!
So that's 3 new friends on live, Hani, Yazen, and now Haitham.
The next thing we're planning to do is a 4 player Worms deathmatch :)
I honestly hope that other friends will join us soon, it will be awesome if we can pull off an all-Iraqi Gears of War 8 player match :)
It all started with vista. XP was happily chugging along on my 36gb raptor, which I've dedicated just for the O/S and any programme installations (not games though). With vista, 36gb just isn't enough. The O/S is big and with the programmes installed, it was getting tight.
So I thought I'd get a new hard drive. As I refuse to use anything other than Western Digital, I ordered a 150g RaptorX, those sexy drives that have a see-through cover. Now to display the drive you need cases that have a drive bay sideways, and a window obviously. After loads of looking around, I decided on an Armor Jr from Thermaltake.
And since I was changing the case, I thought I'd get a new power supply. I liked Wolf's Thermaltake Toughpower because of it's cable management system, so I bought a 700w Toughpower to go with the case.
After about ONE MILLION problems installing everything, and I mean turning the PC on once and smelling this horrible burning smell (no clue what burnt, but it was because I'd jumpered a power connection - don't ask), and loads of other problems like forgetting to install the PSU so I had to uninstall everything to fit the damn thing in, and so on and so forth....... it's finally all installed, and I think everything is ticking perfectly. I hope. Windows has installed ok and I need to install tons of drivers, which I can't be arsed with at this moment.
The case is great, it uses cool screw-free rails to install the 5.25 devices, and some screw-free clips to install cards (but to be honest I screwed the gfx and sound cards in, I'm not trusting a piece of plastic!). It also features a useful frame that holds 4 hard drives in, and the screw holes are fitted with little plastic rings to reduce vibration and noise. It also has five 5.25 bays, one of which is at the very bottom! Problem is, when you install the RaptorX in it's display position, it totally blocks the hard drive cage! The solution is to move the cage into the space of 3 5.25 bays (hence rendering them useless for 5.25 devices). As such, I had to lose a dvd burner (I didn't really use 2 drives to be honest, so I'm not bothered about it that much), but I also had to remove the abit uGuru panel (that displays time, temps, voltages etc). I miss that a lot actually, so tomorrow I'm going to order one of these ;)
Watching the RaptorX work is really scary. The needle jumps around so fast I keep thinking it's going to break. Or scratch the surface. I tried to video it but it was too dark, so I'll try again tomorrow.
I leave you with some crappy out of focus pictures (I'm tired :p)
Ah, so it's over :( Tomorrow at 8:20 we fly out to Heathrow, arriving at 20:20 local time. My mum's gonna pick us up and take us straight to Liverpool Street, on the other side of London. Problem is, we need to get to the airport (Newark, New Jersey), fairly early, so our Super Shuttle is coming at 4:00! Oh well...
Today we did a MASSIVE shopping trip, mainly at Macy*s and SoHo. We bought loads of stuff for us, for my mum, and for Kelly's family.
We've only eaten breakfast at around 12ish, so we're hungry, VERY hungry. We've packed all our stuff now, and we're going to go say goodbye to New York by: 1\ having loads to eat at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co 2\ having a coffee and Number One Original Cheesecake at Junior's 3\ have a cocktail at Dave and Buster's
Then it's back here to shower and then off to airport. It's been a great week and we've seen and done tons. We weigh tons also :p
Today we made it to The Statue! Thank God we didn't go yesterday though. I'll explain: Theoretically, getting to Liberty Island is fairly simple, by taking the Number 1 Metro to "Battery Park", which is the last station on Lower Manhattan. From there, you buy a ferry ticket and hop on to the ferries that run every 30 minutes to the island. Easy right? We left the hotel about 11ish, and walked to a different subway station that is a bit further from the hotel but is on the Number 1 line. We had a quick breakfast there (Starbucks in America is crap also, just like everywhere else), and got on to the train to Battery Park. On the train there was a notice saying that you needed to be in the first 5 cars if you wanted to get off at Battery Park, so we had to change cars en route.
When we got to Battery Park, it was fairly simple finding the ferry, and the HUGE queue that was waiting to get on board!! We started to queue and then someone told us that we had to get tickets first, so we went to the ticket booths (small queue there) and got our tickets, then queued again. The queue moved fairly fast, until we reached this big tent-like thing, where there were security guards and metal detectors and x-ray scanners! And, just like airports, we had to have our stuff scanned and pockets emptied etc. It turns out that since September the 11th, security at national monuments had become very strict.
After that we waited for the passengers on the ferry to disembark, then we got on. We sat on the top deck and I instantly felt sick! It's odd, cos I've never had sea-sickness before, and I'm ok on river boats and theme park rides etc. I spent the 15 minute trip looking at the floor :(
We took a look around the island and the statue which is very impressive. It's huge and is very detailed, and it felt great seeing something that you'd read and heard so much about before. The Gorillapod that Kelly gave me last christmas really helped today, because I used it to set up the camera on the floor in front of us, and I set the camera to remote control capture. Once I'd gotten the right angle, I sat next to Kelly and just pressed the remote control button, which takes a picture after 2 seconds! It was really useful and lets you take pictures of yourself exactly as you want them, without having to ask people to do it for you etc. The site of the camera and pod also intrigued quite a few people :)
We then had to take the ferry (long queue again!) to Ellis Island (Immigration Museum), and waited for people to get on and off there, then back to NY. We got back to Battery Park at 15:45!
So, what should be a fairly simple thing was actually nearly a whole day's worth of queuing and traveling, because of the huge number of visitors to the statue and security.
After that we went to Little Italy, which was basically a single (but fairly lengthy) street with restaurants galore. Surprisingly, it took us ages to find one of the rarest Italian dishes we wanted to have that day, PIZZA! Yes, in Little Italy it's nearly impossible to have a pizza. The majority of restaurants serve pasta, pollo etc etc. No pizza. Eventually, we found a place that sold pizza (El Picollo Buffalo or something like that). We ordered some starters (Stuffed Mushrooms for Kelly, Fried Calamari for me), and 2 large pizzas for us to share. The menu had 2 sizes of pizza, and this is exactly how they were described: Small - 4 slices, Large 8 slices. We thought that small would be like Pizza Hut small, and the large 8 slices sounded reasonable. We should have guessed from the surprised tone in the voice of the waitress that this was what we had gotten ourselves in to:
They damn things were huge! We managed to eat a half of each one, and took the rest in a box, which we got bored of carrying so we tried to give it to the first poor person we saw. He refused it cos it wasn't hot (no joke!).
After that we wandered to SoHo, which was full of hippy kind of shops (ever heard of The Yellow Rat Bastard? me neither). Didn't really see anything nice there, and it was quite hot and we were getting really tired, so we headed back to Times Square and went to Jamba Juice for a quick, refreshing, and again really big, fruit smoothie. I had Mango-a-go-go and Kelly had Caribbean Passion.
And that was that. Our NYC trip is nearly over, with only tomorrow left that we've dedicated to a big Macy's shopping spree, and an even bigger dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Maybe a cheese cake at Junior's and a cocktail at Dave & Busters as a goodbye ;)
Today we were meant to go to The Statue Of Liberty. The plan was that we get up, go get some breakfast, then quickly go to the Skechers shop because they had a weekend-only 20% discount.
Another thing was that my Macbook's laptop decided to break while we're here. A few days ago it decided to shut down while still about 25% charged. I thought nothing of it and carried on but it started happening again and again. I took the battery out and for some reason it had a big bulge in it, as if something had swollen up. So I thought I'd take it to The Apple Shop (any excuse!) to see if it was still under warranty.
So we needed to buy some Skechers, sort out the Mac's battery, drop our stuff back at the hotel, and go to Liberty Island.
We got in to Times Square around 10:30 and just sat in a random cafe and had some bagels and coffee. Then we went to the Skechers shop, I had already decided what shoes I wanted from a previous visit (Some green and blue and orange and white and gold and navy trainers! Seriously, the look great! Picture later on), and Kelly got some nice trainers that don't need laces (they have elastic bands across them). My trainers aren't actually Skechers, they're something else called "Avirex", just as American though. We both also got some slippers.
It was off to The Apple Shop next, and I showed them the battery. Strangely enough they didn't think I had dropped it or something, seeing that it had a big bulge in it. Apple give a one year warranty with their stuff, so I was worried I was past that. Luckily, my warranty expired on the 25th of April!! So, the battery chose a great time (and place!) to break, just 3 days before I would have had to pay $120 for a new one.
We got back to the hotel at around 2ish, dropped our stuff and freshened up to go out again. I checked the guide book to see how we could get to The Statue, and it turns out you can only get there by Ferry, and the last one each day was 15:30! If we had rushed we might have gotten there on time (it's at the very bottom of Manhattan, and we're near the very top). For a city where shops and restaurants stay open till 1am, and the metro runs 24 hours a day, it's really odd that their ferry service to a major tourist attraction actually operates "British" hours!
With the Statue Of Liberty plans out of the window, we went to Macy's quickly instead. I needed a pair of jeans (I came here with a single pair of tatty jeans that had a hole in them!). We zipped in and out of Macy's, mainly because it was an amazing shop, huge, full of everything, cheap-ish, and we could have stayed there for hours! Then we went to eat at TGI Friday's on Times Square. That was a disappointment, not because of the food (OK, nothing amazing), but the service was really bad and the food took ages to come out. Not just for us, but every other table on our floor (it's a 4 storey restaurant!).
Now, on our way out from the cinema a few days ago, we spotted something called Dave and Busters. It's an odd mix of an amusement arcade, a bar, and a restaurant. It looked cool so we went there after Friday's and sat at the bar, watching baseball (!!) and we had a couple of cocktails.
I was waiting for it to get dark to take some pictures, so as we left the bar it was nearly dark, so we went to the Junior's Bakery (a small side of the main Junior's restaurant, sells coffee and cheese cake). I had a coffee and a plain cheese cake. Kelly had a coffee and a "Devil's Food" cheese cake. Her slice was so big and heavy, I had to take a quick snap of it, with Kelly's hand by the side for scale :)
Finally, it had gotten dark by then so we wandered around the square taking tons of pictures of all the lights and buildings. Most of the night shots end up being deleted, either because of a really bright light ruining them, or bluriness, or bad exposure etc. I tend to set the camera to take 6 continuous shots rapidly, that way there's always one of the shots that looks acceptable.
Tomorrow: Statue of Liberty, Little Italy, and SoHo (South of Houston Street, got some nice shops apparently).
I leave you (at last!) with some of the pictures :) The Averix Devil's Food Cheese Cake (Bigger than Kelly's hand!!) Toys 'R' Us (That big display changes periodically! and if you look carefully, you'll see some of the spokes of the big wheel ride inside!) Times Square Subway station (those letters are glittery gold and move about) Broadway
We spent most of today in Central Park. The weather was really good, being sunny but with a bit of clouds and a nice breeze every now and then.
The park is huge, so we just wondered around and sat somewhere with lots of people. Before we went to the park, we bought lots of food and goodies from the local store (which is really good) and so we were sat there munching most of the time :)
One very noticeable thing about New York is that a) most people are alone (ie single) and b) almost everyone has a small dog. Some in dog baskets, some in little dog clothes, but out of every 10 (single) people we saw, at least 6 had a small dog. I was also messing around with the camera and realised that taking really close up pictures of flowers or grass or insects is really cool, especially when the rest of the picture is out of focus, and the main focus is a small thing like that. I also like taking pictures where the foreground is out of focus (see Kelly's picture below). May be that's another (expensive) hobby I should take up, photography!
Finally, as we were wondering around we stumbled on a part of the park full of sports courts and the like. A bunch of people were playing a rather heated game of street basketball, while some parents were watching their kids play baseball. It was all very cool, and very very American :)
Lots of things going on today. We got in to Times Square at about 11:30 and decided to have Breakfast (Brunch?) in Planet Hollywood. The NY Planet Hollywood is one of the coolest I've seen, mainly cos it has massive screens all over the place.
We then went to The Rockefeller Center on 5th Avenue. It's a funny complex of lots of buildings, but the main attractions there are The Nintendo World shop, and "Top of The Rock", which is a 67th floor observatory. I bought some t-shirts and a really cool wallet from Nintendo (looks like a NES controller and comes in a great tin case resembling an NES cartridge!), then we went up to the top in a super fast lift. Was fun up there but gets boring quick cos there's so much you can see.
After that it was Katz's Deli, which is a very famous Deli in The Lower East Side. It is a huge place with loads of pictures of celebrities on the wall, and the most famous claim it has is that a famous scene from (When Harry Met Sally) was filmed there. On top of the table where they sat is a sign making you aware of it. They sell some really good pastrami sandwiches, and Kelly had a burger.
Then it was back to Time Square where we saw Grindhouse at The Empire AMC. I loved Grindhouse (and so did Kelly). Planet Terror is more fun I think, mainly cos it's gory and just over the top cheesy. Death Proof is excellent also but in a Tarantino style, ie loads of long and sometimes meaningless conversations, but with some extra-witty narrative, and an explosive scene or two of pure action. The fake trailers in the middle are great, particularly the ultra-gory "Thanksgiving" by Eli Roth. Highly recommended provided you watch the trailer and promise yourself that you're not gonna expect anything more than trailer quality, b-movie, cheesy, gory, dodgy camera, missing reels (if you see it you'll see what I mean) kind of Hollywood.
Best thing about watching Grindhouse though was the American audience! They are loud, chatty, loads of "oooooohhhhs and aaaaaaaaahssssss" and "Jesus!!" when something really gory happens, and of course the mandatory applause and whistling when a baddy gets caught or taken down etc etc. Really added to the whole experience! And that's about it for today. I've been trying to upload some pictures for the last 3 days but this leeched internet I'm using doesn't seem to be very happy. I'll try agiain tomorrow.
Have had a great day today, but also very tired, so I might sound incoherant :)
Today we decided to wander around the "Center Of The Universe" as they like to call it, ie Time Square. A great place where there are tons of neon lights, big massive screens that display anything, and where all the shops are supersized and just American.
To start things off, Kelly had told me about a restaurant she saw on TV called "Junior's". We thought that it only served cheese cake and there was one in Brooklyn. Turns out there's 3 of them, one in Time Square, and they serve main course and cheese cake. We went there for breakfast. We both told the waiter that we wanted Benedict Egg and some coffee, so he told us that we should really order something with the egg, otherwise it's just a single poached egg. We foolishly agreed and both ordered some corned beef hash as a side. The food came and not only was there 2 eggs on a base of bread and meat, but the corned beef hash wasn't a side order, it was a main meal in itself! I had to really force my self to finish it (OK, not really :p). Then we had the cheesecake which we thought was really nice. The Original Number 1 Cake (aka the plain cake) was really good.
We then just wandered around the square and saw tons of really American things, like semi naked men and women filming something outside The MTV Store, and the big massive Toys R Us store that is so big it actually has a full-sized ferris wheel ride inside it!
Another American oddity was the M&M's World Store! Yes, M&M's have now got stores that sell all the usual franchise things you'd find in a Disney Store. We actually liked a few things there, so we didn't leave empty handed!
We also went in to a smoothie shop called Jamba Juice, that does these really fresh, big, and very thick and cold smoothies that were great. They literally start off so thick that you can't suck them properly through the straw, just like Mc Donald's milk shake!
Later on we walked down 5th Avenue, which is the posh designer store street, with lots of things like Lous Vitton, Prada, and Tiffany & Co. It also has Apple's flagship store, which on the outside looks really cool, being basically a big see-through cube with the Apple Logo hanging in the middle. The whole store is underground, so all you see from street level is the cube, inside which is the logo and some see-through lifts and stairs! Inside though, it was actually disappointing and fairly basic compared to The Regency Street store in London. Come to think of it, even Steve Jobs himself thinks the London one is better.
I also managed to buy me a hard drive from Best Buy, which is the worst name for a massive chain of stores that sell electronics/computer stuff etc.
Finally, we went to China Town, which really was China Town! Unlike other China Town's I've seen, which were built by cities to look Chinese, this area in New York is actually just a poor, semi-dirty area with predominantly Chinese people. It doesn't just have restaurants and grocers, but all the little stores sell all sorts of Chinese fake stuff, like the bags and the watches and the DVDs etc etc. The restaurants themselves look really authentic, and aren't westernised in any way. We looked around for a bit then went into a Vietnamese restaurant that looked nice, and it was! The staff were nice and polite (a rarity in NY it seems), and the food was some of the best we'd ever had. We both had some noodle soup dishes for main courses, and they really tasted authentic and fresh and we were just enjoying the whole experience. It was also cheap :)
And I think that's about it. I'm sure I've missed out some other really cool things but I'm too tired to think.
SoB out
PS: tomorrow we go see Grindhouse. Scary thing is, the cinema we're seeing it in (AMC Empire) really does look like a seedy grindhouse. Stay tuned.
