allow me to interjekt

So I’m probably writing this cuz the paracetamol I’ve taken for “symptom control” of my current viral infection have left me feeling a little woop woop woop woop woop

BUT

I was thinking, if I was to ever find myself in a zombie movie, I’d totally be the character who gets eaten alive by his best-friend-turned-zombie. I suppose that’s my weird way of saying I’ve recently become aware of just how awesome my friends and family are and how much they mean to me and how no matter what, whether live or reanimated dead, I could never “destroy the brain” of a single one of them.

I have got to stop watching zombie movies.

I would recommend “REC”, Channel 4′s mini-series “Dead Set”, George A Romero’s “Trilogy of the Dead” and for pure comedic value “Flight of the Living Dead”

It’s a new holiday.  December 6th.  Mark it in your diaries, kids.  And this is how we do it:

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Part 4:

We decided to invite the neighbours over for dinner.

Then this happened:

I seriously want this to go viral!

Last Friday (October 10th) I made the journey from Granada up to Salamanca. Niamh had generously invited myself and Hughie to crash at her place for the weekend while we party it up in the frog obsessed city (more on that later).

This is what my journey looked like (you may have to zoom out to see the full route):

Doesn’t look too bad but given that Spain is OVER 6 TIMES THE SIZE OF IRELAND it kinda puts things in perspective.

Food was quite a big thing over the weekend given that at least 6 restaurant visits were made. When you’re served food like this though it does kinda make sense:

And what better to accompany good food? Good conversation. And we had a VERY generous helping of that. Genuinely if you took a transcript of what myself, Hughie and Niamh talked about over the weekend, you’d have a book co-authored by the three of us entitled “Life”. No stone was left unturned: Sarah Palin and the US Presidential race, what there is to love about Dublin, what there is to hate about Dublin, a bit of bitching, the oddness that is the relationship of Starsky and Hutch and how none of us would ever allow ourselves to get into that situation (and no, it’s not about the TV show/movie), expectations about the Erasmus year and the meaning of friendship to name but a few topics of discussion.

I arrived on Friday night at about midnight but Hughie wasn’t arriving til Saturday evening. So it gave myself and Niamh a good chance to do the touristy thang.
Here’s me shaking my tail feather in Plaza Mayor during the day:

Here’s the same place by night:

Pretty, much??

I gotta say the Salamenticenses (People or things from Salamanca – take that English students!!) have a pretty good sense of humour.

When restoring this beast of a cathedral…

…they decided to go a little bit mad with the stone work:

Yes that is a dragon with an ice cream

and that is an astronaut

There’s also a local legend that if you find the frog in the stone work on one of the external walls of the university unaided then you’ll have seven years of good luck. Ask any student and they’ll tell you that it’s actually seven years good sex.

I was searching for quite a while

I'd been staring about a foot to the right of it for a good 5 minutes before seeing it

The trio (Niamh, Hughie and I) were reunited on Saturday evening and we were all ready for the fun to begin.

But as I mentioned in the title of this post it was a “very mature weekend”. Why? I managed to spend the entire weekend without getting crazy drunk (that’s not to say I wasn’t merry!) and we didn’t set foot into a single club given how good the banter was between us. I’ve kinda come to feel recently that I’m not enjoying club nights as much as I used to. I still enjoy them no doubt but nights in with good mates, good banter and good food really is a hard thing to beat. I suppose it’s the product of being a Celtic Tiger Cub. For me and so many others my age going out at least once a week is was the norm (we’re in a recession now don’cha know?) so having a night in by choice – as opposed to due to exhaustion, hangovers, etc. – is, I suppose, a somewhat alien concept!

Sunday night Ger’s dad very generously treated us to dinner which we followed with a few drinks in the Plaza Mayor and the aforementioned trio continued on in the Erasmus bar. Look how happy we are:

note: A couple of jugs of sangría and tanques of beer/glasses of wine may have been consumed at this point

And now I need to make my thank yous. Thank you to:

• Ger, Niamh and Trish for offering up their abode to myself and Hughie
• Trish for personally giving up her bedroom for the weekend (you were missed but I hope you had a great time in Alicante!)
• Niamh for her fantastic tour-guide skills and much appreciated personal shopper assistance
• Cormac Farrell for a seriously good dinner (first time I’ve properly had red meat since coming to Spain and it was goooooooood)
• Hughie and Niamh for the great conversation
• Salamanca for being a hoot

Thanks shall not, however, be made to Alsa for arriving late into Madrid on the outward journey or RENFE for arriving late into Madrid on the homeward journey and stressing the bejayzus outta me in fear that I’d miss my connecting transport.

A good weekend? Indeedee. Hasta luego, Salamanca.

We had a day off uni on October 6th. We had no idea why. No other unis in the country seemed to have that day off. We didn’t complain. We did however decide we needed a bit of this:

So thanks to Laura’s fabulous organisation skills, we hopped on the 9am bus from Granada to Nerja which took us on a route that looks a little something like this (click on the – on the left of the box to zoom out and see the full image):

View Larger Map

The bus journey itself looked a little something like this:

Steve, Bethan, Alec, Naomi, me, Amy, Jess

It was really odd for me cuz my family had been to Nerja many a time back in the days when I was younger and wider but it had been probably about 6 years since I was last there. Walking around the town and seeing the Balcon was like being on the set of a movie I knew inside out – it was all so familiar but it felt surreal to be there.

The weather was amazing.  The beach wasn’t packed.  The lilos were fun.

Bus back to Granada was at 7. It was a successful day. Til next time, Nerja.

So basically what happened was……………………

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I think it’s quite an accolade to say that you’ve been rescued by the emergency services of the country you’ve done Erasmus in.

Photos after the jump

Read the rest of this entry »

As promised I’ve uploaded a guided tour of the apartment. Check it out below:

Y’know when you have a song that always reminds ya of a certain time or place? Forevermore will I remember the third weekend of August that I spent in Galway when I hear either of the following:

[audiohttp://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1p0hjVmwzDqsrVvfiCGnUa5fB0rjjleA0PCPRAcynpggETeu5UsDRL3dkhJdn8WX_xUOM7V30xxAu4sUSFY1Nj2w/16-Sticking-With-You.mp3] [The Velvet Underground - "I'm Sticking With You"]

No no. It wasn’t my first time watching Juno or hearing the soundtrack. It was the 24 (and a litttttttle bit) hours I spent in Galway between 7:15pm Saturday and 7:30pm Sunday of the weekend just gone by.

You may have already asked the question why is this post entitled “Galway: Part Two” when there’s no post in the Auspainia archives entitled “Galway: Part One”. Well there was supposed to be. But there wasn’t as much to talk about as there is this time. So I may indeed make references to the imaginary post that is “Galway: Part One” and I will try to fill in any blanks that may crop up from having never written that post.

Things got off to a fairly pleasant start thanks to the fabulous weather:

“Don’t you hate pants?”

I arrived to the house in a state somewhat comparable to that of a drowned rat. And seeing as it was just an overnight stay I hadn’t brought a change of trousers. Being the logical chappy that I am I thought “2 pairs of trousers?? Why would I bring them?? 2 jackets on the other hand. Now THAT’s necessary”
That’s when the skorts were invented.
After peeling off the soaked clothes (and hanging them on the door to make the dead midget – who Jill repeatedly tried to kill):

The hanged midget, not to be confused with the hung midget

I decided to construct an outfit out of a t-shirt and my dry jacket. Unfortunately no photo was taken. Or maybe I should say fortunately…

“But wait a second! Did he say he constructed an outfit out of a t-shirt and a dry jacket?? That’s crazy talk David! they’re both torso-wear! What was on your legs??”

Ahhhhh thank you for asking imaginary reader. The upper body was grand. Just a normal tshirt. But that left my legs bare and all I had was a jacket… How can I work this one?
[zips jacket around legs, ties arms like drawstring]
There we go. I’d made shorts. They just didn’t have any seams in the middle. In fact there was no material in the middle. Just air. Carol politely pointed out that with the aforementioned description it was somewhat unjust to name my makeshift legwear “shorts” when in actual fact they had all the attributes of a skirt. I refused to admit that I was wearing a skirt. When I looked at myself in the mirror it really did look like I was wearing shorts. From the front. From the back was a different story however. I admitted partial defeat and reached a 50/50 compromise. They were neither shorts nor a skirt.

They were skorts.

And they were good.

I wore my skorts most the evening (despite 3 offers of trousers).

“Pasta? Or Soup? Or Sousta? Not Poup.”

Cooked my dinner – smoked salmon pasta with a cream and white wine sauce – which ended up being white wine and cream soup with a tiiiiiny bit of smoked salmon and a few strings of spaghetti. It’s soupiness was aided by my reaction after my first spoonful of the stuff:
“This is missing something”
[proceeds to pour half the bottle of wine into the bowl]

“I’ve got trousers!!!”

Eventually I got bored of/cold/over-ventilated from wearing my skorts so after hair dryering (yeah it’s a verb) the bejayzus out of my jeans they were dry enough for me to wear and I returned to the sitting room, bursting through the door declaring:
“I’ve got trousers!!!”
Unfortunately due to the loudness of the hair dryer I hadn’t noticed the arrival of 3 new guests. Yeah….. I declared the fact that I was wearing trousers to 3 complete strangers. I felt so cool. I kinda spun around in a circle with embarrasment (a la Dizzy Dizzy dinonsaur) before finding a corner to cower in.

The following events may not exactly be in sequence but I don’t care and neither should you.

The vagitaional pull of Karl’s ass

With the music playing on the ipod speakers which were perched atop the TV (completely illogically) we became witness to something that was later termed “the vagitaional pull of Karl’s ass”. Somehow, every time Karl got up to dance the ipod speakers would get knocked off the TV.
The ipod speakers that were on the other side of the room.
The seismic reaction of Karl’s ass shaking (or “assquake”) sent tremors across the room disrupting the music from its natural habitat. Isn’t nature fascinating?

Andrew Kenny, meet… Kenny Andrews??

Given that Jill’s boyfriend Andrew was staying over at the same time I was down there I thought it only right that I give forewarning that my alter ego Andrew may make a guest appearance later in the night (He allegedly did). Anyway I wanted to avoid confusion given how my Andrew always speaks of himself in the third person and I didnt want Jill thinking I was talking about her Andrew in a derogatory manner. So we decided her Andrew needed a nickname but it turns out he hates being called by his last name, Kenny. It was at that moment I realised my Andrew doesn’t have a surname. Then everyone started talking really fast and a lot of confusion ensued. Some suggestions emerged including:
- give my Andrew the surname Kenny. I can’t see what problems that would’ve solved. If anything It would’ve made matters more confusing
- change Jill’s Andrew’s first name to Kenny and his surname to Andrews making him Kenny Andrews. It could work but it was still very confusing
- rename my Andrew and call him Kenny Andrews. ABSOLUTELY no. My Andrew is never getting renamed.

Other highlights included

• 2 garlic and cheese fries, regular fries, pepperoni pizza and Sprite
• Going crazy when “Chick Habit” came on in the Róisín
• The 3 taxi fiasco
• “For all the X in China”
• The bouncers in the Róisín not giving a shit when I broke 3 glasses but making me aware of it all the same
• # I kissed a girl, and it was ok #
• To do: Warm shower, cold beer

Unfortunately I can’t embed this so click on the link below to have a gander.

Fuck the Pain Away sung by Miss Piggy

courtesy of FunnyOrDie.com

Lord knows how I didn’t discover How I Met Your Mother any earlier than I did. Oh wait that’s right BBC showed it for a short while before giving up on it and it’s only shown on Trouble now, which I don’t have. Also can’t understand why none of the Irish channels picked it up. I’d expect it to be a total TG4 success story a la The OC or What I Like About You. Annnnnyway I’ve been catching up with it online and for me the best moments in the series have been the Robin Sparkles appearances. It’s like the direction That 80′s Show would have gone if they’d had a higher production budget. But sadly That 80′s Show died a 13 episode death (unlucky much??). In my view most of the best shows only ever last one season:

• Freaks and Geeks

• That 80′s Show

• Opposite Sex (which starred Milo Ventimiglia [Heroes], Chris Evans [The Fantastic Four] and Allison Mack [Smallville] !)

first part of episode 1

• Clone High

highlights of episode 1

• The Tick (live action) (with Patrick Warburton [Joe in Family Guy] as The Tick) {watch The Tick here}

Luckily, however, How I Met Your Mother hasn’t fallen into that trap and 3 seasons in, it’s still going strong.

As I said – Robin Sparkles is the highlight for me so I’m gonna leave you with some gold….

Robin Sparkles – Sandcastles In The Sand

http://www.myspace.com/robinsparkles