A tale of two coffees

You know the feeling, y'all get into work at the crack of noon and want a coffee to help you wake up. Getting this has previously not been a problem, although my usual is a tea or 7 to get me through the day I am not against a coffee now and again. In fact I do enjoy a good mocha. Unfortunately sometimes this is not as easy as it should be.

It comes down to the English pronunciation of 'mocha', it comes down to:

I say mock-a, while you say mow-ka (I apologize for my terrible phonetics and if I am wrong please point it out)

these two variations are not too different, or at least I thought so. But as it takes me bloody ages to get a mocha having to repeat it a few times this is obviously not the case.

Ok some might say my voice isn't the clearest, but my sister had similar problems. It feels likes some people over here just cannot get different accents. For the majority it is not a problem but I am surprised at how much I do have to repeat myself, I really feel for people with strong accents. Mine is really not strong at all, and I do resort to Americanizing my speech as it is just easier. Although I may start getting all Yorkshire on em and gettin me sen off t pub. Translation and you can have a play here with the Yorkshire Translator.

Speaking of accents, Rhodri is coming to NC in October, I still think he sounds drunk when (apparently) hes not, ah well the man speaks the international language of having a laugh so I am sure they will love him.

Coastal North Carolina - Wrightsville Beach

Here is the third and final part of my holiday snaps that I took with my parents. This is the closest beach to my house, about 2 hours away. I think it's slightly better than the beaches near Sheffield.

This beach is on the Atlantic Ocean


NC has nice sand dunes, although this one is a little baby


The beach is on a little island, with a body of water behind

The brown pelicans would fly right by our hotel balcony, you could spit on em if it wasn't so windy

I have no idea what this little wading bird was but they move bloody fast

Lovely flat white beaches with Sea Oats growing. It take about five minutes to walk from one side of the island to the other, but they can be really long, I think this one was about 5 miles.

The wind was pretty powerful. It made swimming really difficult but I loved every minute I was in the water

I just really liked taking photos of theses posts......

Wilmington, NC

Here is the second part of my vacation with the folks. After DC we traveled to the beautiful North Carolina coast, to a lovely little town called Wilmington. Here are just some shot I took while out with my family. So I guess it would be rude not to include a photo of them.

Arghhh Ye be ware.....

The USS North Carolina now rests in a dock on the Cape Fear river. It is really cool. I love looking round stuff like this.

It is a bit of a monster

This photo is great, it's off the deck of the USS NC and it really does capture the image in my head of a gnarled southern river bank.

I found this on the other river bank..... didn't see any though :'-(


This boat is not so lucky as the USS NC

These next few photos were taken from a river cruise on the Cape Fear river. I love being on the water.

The riverfront is fantastic to walk down.

Nice seafood restaurants too

This is me getting all arty. I love taking photos at dusk. I have really started getting back into photography since moving to the states. All you UK tax payers out there will be glad to know my GCSE in photography is not being wasted, unlike the US tax payers who are paying for me to go on these holidays.

North Carolina actually has a pretty good film industry apparently. Here is a snap of the filming One Tree Hill. Dawson's Creek and Forest Gump and around 200 other films have also filmed in Wilmington. Which is why some call it Wilmywood.

DC

I have been doing the tourist thing with my parents and sister but I am now once again gracing the streets of Dirty D with my presence. Here is me looking like a tourist outside George's house. My sister has started calling me 'Yankee Boy' as she says I look American. So I thought I would put this photo up illustrating the fact.

I do like Washington, it does have loads of cool buildings, such as the capitol

The Washington memorial


And the Lincoln memorial

This is a view of the Pentagon from Arlington cemetery, methinks the people in there should spend a little more time next door and see what their plans cause.

You do get some bloody good views of Washington though. I do highly recommend it.



More to follow soon...

Return of the Fiver

As I am not going to be posting for a few days I thought I would treat you with some photos of random crap I found laying about. As some of you will remember I had a brief obsession with a monster of an apple that was measured by the truly scientific technique of placing money by it, so y'all will be pleased to know that the FIVER is back!

Here is a whopping 2.84l of orange juice. It is lovely but for the life of me I can't think why they wouldn't want to show the lovely colour off in a clear container.......

Here is a picture of my TV screen. Yes that is channel 257.... I don't think I actually have that many channels but it is probably about 200. I watch about 10 of em if that. I do get live premiership games (bloody united getting relegated) and BBC America.

I love this radio, it is so old school. You may or may not know that I do love old radios. This reminds me of the one I had in my kitchen at Evelyn Road, it used to be in our kitchen at home and was from the 70s.

Here is my new mode of transport. She ain't pretty but I do love her, she does have two different tires, which I shall be sorting soon. She had a little accident on Sunday and decided that two inflated tires was so passé and had to have a ride in Ryan's car.

Here is my new Bojays Koozie. A koozie is designed to keep your beer cold in hot and humid weather. So they are perfect for the North Carolina Boar's breath and Bojays is a fine eating establishment. The beer is a Dos Equis, a Mexican tipple that goes down rather nicely.

I just couldn't resist.

Blog Update

Here is a piece of from the annals of the Ryan Hill. It's title is: screaming man in cytochrome C.

Anyway this point of this is to say I will probably not post till the latter part of August from after this weekend. I have my thesis to write, which is proving very stressful. It was once said by a wise man "sometimes a scream is better than a thesis" - Ralph Waldo Emerson .

But on the plus side my parents are coming on the 7th of August and we are going on a little roadtrip so expect lots of blog photos and silliness (yes my sister is coming). I am super pumped (excited for you brits) about them coming and want as much of my thesis done before they come. I may have time for a silly photo update before then.

So catch you soon.

Bob