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

New York City - Brooklyn and Queens

Finally here is my last update from NYC. This is my adventures is Brooklyn and Queens. I flew into Queens so I thought I would start with that first. Before my trip to New York I had never taken an internal flight (only a transfer), it was very different from my other flying experiences. I checked in at a touch screen kiosk, and it really was just like getting on a bus, well with a couple of burly security guards and x-ray machines. I did almost miss my flight as I was waiting at the gate that it said on my ticket, which was obviously the wrong thing to do. Anyway here is a relic from the 1964/65 World's fair at Flushing Meadows-Corona park, Queens, NY.


Here it is, with the "UFOs" for all you Men in Black fans.

The park was actually pretty cool, definitely a nice way to spend an hour before a METS game, or if you are lucky enough to get a US tennis open ticket. I guess no trip for me would not be complete without some kinda of baseball related thing now. As Dan had never seen a baseball game I thought it would be cool to take him to see a MLB game and the Yankees were only playing on the Sunday. I sported my Durham Bulls cap of course. It was pretty cool, we saw a home run and got some hot dogs brought to us, he he.

I was really happy that we got to spend sometime in Brooklyn, as it is damn cool. From chilling out late evening on Shannon's rooftop, finding lots of book that people leave on the 'sidewalk', strolling along the promenade, to eating Pizza under the Manhattan bridge (see previous photo here). It is just a cool place to visit. It feels more like New York, the Brooklyn accent is fantastic (unfortunately Iain I didn't here anybody proclaim in a gruff voice "thats it, we're moving to joysey" but I did hear lots of grumpy people that could have said it. Which reminds me of something that I heard in Manhattan. A really big tough looking guy was talking to his friend about going to get some beers after work, then he just came out with "you will need to remind me to call my cat sitter"...only in NYC. Check other out on overheard in New York.

We also rode the Subway to Conney Island. Which was pretty damn cool as for a lot of Brooklyn it is over ground and you can see all the buildings etc, which quite a few had Dutch style architecture, which is a nod to the old school new Amsterdam era. I'm not going to lie to you, Conney Island is like Blackpool but without the donkeys and amusement parks. But it does have 'Shoot the Freak'.

And a pretty cool rollercoaster. Thats doesn't look to scary


But it kinda was....

Red Collar

Had a wonderful evening last Friday night. It started off with a bloody massive thunderstorm. The electricity even went off. The tales of the thunderstorm were pretty funny, we had a near miss (due to Ryan being outside while the storm was going down), a shaking car and a broken shooing bag which nearly resulted in a tofu squashing incident. To top it off all the way to Chapel Hill it was fine and as soon as we pulled on to Franklin St (the main st of Chapel Hill), the thunderstorm decided to have another go at us, apparently not satisfied with almost getting the tofu squished it wanted to stop us going to Carrburritos. But alas four hungry people within spitting distance of the best burritos in the triangle were not going to be stopped by a little torrential rain.

After out fill of burritos it was to the local 506 for the musical entertainment of the evening. Ryan spotted the singer from Red Collar the band we were planning to see. We were invited to a house party they were also playing later that evening. The first band were fronted by a maths professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. They were pretty good actually. The place was rammed, usually at the 506 there aren't too many people, but it was a free CD launch party, people always love free shows, even with the possibility of getting pissed on by thunderstorms won't stop em. So as you can see from the photo I stole, of the gig it was pretty sweaty.

Red Collar are five piece from Durham, NC. I'm not going to try and pigeonhole them, they just play good modern rock 'n' roll. Listen to them. They put on such a good show. With so much energy (see photo below), even in the bloody hot pit that is the 506. They put a smile on our faces. I don't think you ask for much more than that. I paid money to see a lot worse bands and I will pay good money to see Red Collar again. After the set we had to get out as it was far too hot. So we went to the posh wine bar down the street. I found out they serve PBR in a can for a dollar 50. Sweet, the night was turning out to be pretty good and we hadn't even got near Time Out Chicken.

We mosied on down to the party. It was pretty cool party with lots of people. We managed to find time to find some gin that was washed down with Buzz cola (an advertising scheme from those good people who brought us the Simpson's movie). I have had worse drinks.... just. The band were indeed setting up to play in somebody's living room. That was pretty strange to see (see pic of band below, complete with curtains in the background). What was even stranger was the mosh pit that ensued. You couldn't really escape it. It was so cool being in somebody's house with a damn good band playing. Certainly one of my coolest experiences in the US so far, especially Andy 'losing his shit' in the mosh pit, I'm not going to try an explain that one but I will go as far to say he didn't soil himself. The moral of the story, Durham rocked Chapel Hill.

After the band had finished a Time Out was called, and answered. I had my usual of chicken and a biscuit, but a fellow party goer had a 2 and a half dollar ice cream sandwich. This thing was huge (not 'el gigante' huge but still pretty damn big). It consisted of two cookies that were approximately face sized and about a tub of ice cream in it. People couldn't get their teeth round it. Yes, you will be pleased to know I shall be eating one in the near future, complete with pictures of a fiver being swamped by it.

Steak

A tale of two steaks.

Here we see an American male in his natural habitat. A native to North Carolinacestershire, but has spent time in the Steak capital of the world, Texas. After the Steak was wrestled from the freezer and thawed out, it was seasoned to within an inch of it's life with all kinds of goodies (I will be killed if I divulge the secret, and Ryan does a have a gun, well a BB gun...). These are the smaller variety of steak and not the 64 oz plate breakers found in Texas.

The colonial is happy to pose for the photograph, but is eager to get on with the grilling, or barbecuing as we Brits would say. They are clearly advanced in the art, as this specimen has a gas griller.

The simple meal consisted of steak, mashed sweet potato, beans, cornbread and pickled cucumber. It went down extremely well. Much better than the staple diet of synthesized food called 'McDonald's' that the larger locals tend to enjoy.

Softball

I was asked to play softball yesterday, which you may remember fro such posts as this one. I am guessing I wasn't the first choice, as until yesterday I had never really tried to catch a ball with a glove on my left hand. Softball and baseball are essentially the same thing for us Brits..... Rounders with gloves. The difference between softball and baseball is that softball the pitcher bowls underarm and the ball is bigger.

Playing was bloody good fun. After a few minutes warm up with the league's glove (thankfully it wasn't like the PE kit that you used to get at school when you forgot yours), I was dropped into right field. Thankfully the other team were all right handers so left field was busy and I was just looking cool in my Sheffield United shirt watching just in case it came to me. Thankfully that didn't happen. It was a pretty slow game at first with both teams getting their allotted three outs to switch innings pretty quick with just a few base hits but no runs.

So up came my first bat. With my unconventional swing I managed to hit it first time. Which was pretty surprising. Next thing I knew I was legging it like a mad man towards the base. I was safe. Woo hoo. Next hitter hit it and the ball got to second before me. I was damn pleased that I hit it. The fielding carried on as I liked it.

Next time I batted, again hit it first time, nobody caught it and I got to first base. Two base hits in a row is pretty good. I got to second on the next hitters go. Pretty impressive I'm thinking. On the next hitters go I get to third and I am told to stop by the third base coach. I just then waited for them to tell me what to do, and just legged it home when the time came. We got 7 runs that innings and one of em was me running it in. WOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOO. Not bad for my second attempt, although I have to give most credit it to the rest of the team or I would have run somebody out or done something equally as stupid. I got my high fives and grabbed my well earned beer.

In the end I got about 4 runs like that in the end. Got quite a lot of base hits. I was pretty pleased. The team were pretty excited about it too. We had to play another game after the first one, which we won. The second game was against the people from the previous post. Ah ha. My batting was pretty much the same as the first except they were pretty good fielders and everyone was finding it difficult to get the runs in. I was moved to the more exciting roll of catcher in the fielding part of the innings. This was what took some getting used to. Catching with my left hand and not with my body behind the ball was really strange.

All in all it was a good outing. It really hurt today. Next time I might even get a photo of it. It wasn't pretty though, thankfully the full Boars Breath of NC weather wasn't in full effect or it could have been messy.