Ferry to Calais

Ferry to Calais
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

We took an evening ferry to Calais on Easter Sunday, and began our drive south. Before we set off, James popped into Halfords to check the list of things that you are supposed to have in your car when you're driving in France -warning triangle, reflective jacket, spare headlight bulbs.. although we bought everything, we didn't actually realise the significance of the last one until the sun went down, and we were travelling along a toll road in the dark. No cats eyes. In addition to this, there were no street lights! At one point James turned off the headlights to see what it would be like if the bulb went.. scary is the answer! Pitch black complete darkness! It's funny, you would have thought there would be no shortage of that sort of thing on roads that you have to pay to travel on, but hey, I am not complaining.. we had the whole road to ourselves almost all the way to Reims, and there was not a single pot-hole in the road!

Oui, bonjour

Paris, France
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

So a couple of weeks ago, we decided on a whim to take another little tour. Last time we did a mad dash around the UK, but this time we thought we would head a tiny bit further, and take our small pug back to its homeland.

Armed with our invaluable French phrase book, (it is always a bad sign when you can only say 'J'ai onze ans'), we jumped on a ferry and headed to the south of France.

Saturn

Saturn
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

I spotted this out of the window last night at around 9pm. Never seen anything so bright like that, apart from perhaps one of Mohammed Al Fayed's helicopters! We watched it for about half an hour, and it didn't seem to move. We also had a peek through the telescope, and it appeared to me to be rainbow coloured, although James says it was just green. With a little investigation, it seems likely that this is Saturn.

First view over downtown Manhatten

View from the top of the Rockefeller centre
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

This was the view over Manhatten that greeted us from the 'Top of the Rock', the observation deck on the roof of the Rockefeller Center. If you look towards the top right of the picture, you will see the Hudson river, and a very tiny Statue of Liberty! If you check this out on flickr, you will be able to zoom in a bit more!

New York: Hudson River Harbour frozen

New York: Ferry port near Battery Park
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

On our first day in New York, after landing at JFK, grabbing a taxi minibus to our hotel, which was in fact an amazing sightseeing tour in itself, dropping off our bags, and jumping straight onto the subway at 110th Street, we decided to head straight off down to the Statue of Liberty. For some reason, the Statue seems like the good and proper thing to see first.. the icon of America that has welcomed immigrants, and visitors, since 1886. In fact, I think the best way to arrive in Manhatten, would be by ferry from New Jersey. [Maybe they do that if you arrive at Newark airport, who knows..] It would be awesome to have that grand NY skyline arrival, but without the epic ocean voyage from Europe first -the flight was long enough!

After a brief stop off at the Rockefeller Center at 51st Street, where we spied the Statue from the 70th floor observation deck(!), we jumped back on the subway down to Ground Zero, still labelled, and referred to, as the World Trade Center stop. We had been informed by a very nice Eastern European guy, who told us he knew Belfast well, lol, that it was only a short walk from the financial district down to Battery Park.

We were amazed to find the harbour, where the ferries usually depart from, actually frozen over! It was *very* cold though.

New York: Central Park West

New York: Central Park West
Originally uploaded by kipperfrog.

Here's a photo taken from the sidewalk near our hotel to the west of Central Park a few weeks ago, can you believe that snow?! Maybe not as impressive as upstate New York, but really! Never seen anything like that before! I love how New Yorkers just scrape all the snow off the pavement and pile it up in the road, lol.

Star Trek XI update..

here! Paramount Pictures has confirmed the next Star Trek movie will be released on Christmas Day 2008. =)

Kipperfrog & Ninjabathy take Manhatten...

Oops, I just remembered I had this saved from a while back, it's about time I published something!

So, we are back from the land of falling ice! I would call it a minor miracle our plane made it back to London at all after the runway was turned into an ice rink, (all the previous flights cancelled), the safety video on the plane didn't work, the intercom system kept cutting out, the video projector nearly shook off the ceiling when the engines started up, the lunchtime bacon roll was frozen, and to top it off, lol, someone in the departure lounge said they had a "bad feeling" about the flight.. reminded me of that episode of Friends where Phoebe phones up Rachel on the plane and said she has a feeling there was something wrong with the felange, and everyone freaks out and gets off, lol. I always feel it's a bad sign when the pilot announces the wrong destination when you set off, and the air hostess says a prayer and signs herself with a cross during landing. Don't you just love American Airlines!

Anyway, what an awesome place New York is, we really did have the best time! =)

Here's the view towards upper Manhatten from the top of the Rockefeller Centre -what an amazing view over Central park! This is the first thing we saw after arriving in NY and dropping off our bags at the hotel.. needless to say, it was *extremely* cold, I would say this may be the very moment I vowed not to leave the hotel without a hat, gloves and 2 jumpers again!

New York

Ooh my goodness.. look at the weather in New York next week! Better pack our snowsuits!

<- There's a photo of upstate NY already, eek!!

Star Trek convention photos..

I've uploaded my convention photos to flickr.. there are quite a few, so it might be easier to go and check them out there for now!

Eeeeek!

Our neighbours' house, right across the road, has just gone up in smoke!!!! Firemen and police everywhere!

Update: Oxted school had the day off due to anticipated snow problems, so with lots of time on their hands, it seems that a group of them decided to break into our neighbours' garage, for a bit of drinking and smoking fun.. surrounded by stockpiled petrol. So that is how it started. They were spotted running away, apparently. It was lucky for the couple across the road that their son decided to stop by, as he was in the area, and noticed the smoke coming out of the garage.. I only saw what had happened when a siren outside our house jumped me, and I looked out of the window to be greeted with all the billowing smoke! Luckily everyone was fine in the end, and the house looks alright, so all is well.

First snow of the year!!

Borat update.. (Jak się masz?)

Ooh dear.. It looks like I was right about Borat.

"The Villagers Of Glod…
Borat's Kazakhstani village as it appeared in the film was actually a remote Romanian village called Glod. The villagers who appeared in the movie claim to have been paid a mere £3 each by the production, completely unaware that they were about to be portrayed as incestuous primitives. Having gathered the evidence against Cohen, the villagers' attorneys have filed for $30 million in damages. "

Annoying songs..

Do you ever have the sort of day, where you wake up with the most annoying song in your head, and it won't go away until you hear it? Of all the random things, this morning I woke up with the 'Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise' song on repeat in my mind. I wasn't entirely sure if I'd made this song up or not to be honest, it sounded a little unlikely to me, but sure enough when I googled it, there it was. I think it was the Star Trek convention that did it.

In fact, when I listened to the song it made the problem worse, because then I could remember snippets of the lyrics, and eventually I had to look them up. As if this was not bad enough, I happened to mention to James that at least I didn't wake up with that other song stuck in my head... now what was it...

It look me a second, and then I remembered. How could I forget.. Magical Trevor! So now, the song that took me near on 6 months to rid from my brain is back, and is now accompanied by Jean-Luc Picard. Help!

Star Trek 40th Anniversary Convention, Hilton Metropole, London

Yesterday, James and I went to our first Star Trek convention!

We set off at the crack of dawn, on an empty train, save one angry ticket inspector who told James off for feet on seats.. tut tut..

Stopped off in Croydon, and waited for our connecting train up to Victoria..

we couldn't decide whether this was the site of an ex-platform, or if it was the foundations for part of the Croydon regeneration project that they're advertising on the posters.. hmm..

At Victoria we grabbed a bagel and crisps, and then headed straight for the underground, eagerly anticipating carriages full of klingons. Lol, after our careful predictions about who exactly would be accompanying us to the convention, it became apparent as we got closer and closer to Edgeware Road that everyone else was headed elsewhere. We started to wonder if we perhaps had the wrong day, when not even a single pointy eared companion joined us. Mild concern as we departed the train alone.

As it happened, no sooner had we emerged from the station, we saw the Hilton, and a nice reassuring sign telling us that the door wasn't working, and we had to talk through some kind of secret hole in the side of the wall! Actually, it was quite cool. Luckily, when we got inside all the signs for the convention were up, so we merrily wound our way upstairs to the registration desks. We were met with a queue of about 30ish people..

to begin with it looked like it was a no show on the uniform front, although we were quite pleased when we realised the guy in front of us playing on his PDA had a next generation computer theme, including sound effects, hehe! Then, gradually, more people joined us, and the trench coats started to come off..

and by the time we had got our tickets we could see quite a few! <---

(you might need to zoom in to spot them)

This is the view of the foyer at the Hilton, I liked the completely transparent lifts in the centre, they were very posh.

The convention actually took up a couple of floors. The mezzanine level had rooms packed full of merchandise, and minor celebrities (like the crocodile alien that Kirk drops a boulder on); the basement conference centre was taken over for the main programme of the day, namely Q&A sessions with Connor Trinneer, Dominic Keating, and Patrick Stewart, autographs, the sci-fi auction, and various presentations by Richard Arnold.

Happy New Year!! =)

Happy New Year everyone!

New year's resolution -more blog posts lol.

Wow, the London fireworks were awesome, I loved what they did with the London eye, and that crazy boat with fireworks shooting from it! I'm really glad it wasn't my job to drive that thing.

Windsor & Wii

We went over to Windsor this afternoon, following a wii surprise this morning in Kingston. Games had to be bought, so we thought we'd go and see what Windsor had to offer. It's a very nice town, and definitely getting in to the Christmas spirit! We had animatronic reindeer, carol singing butchers, the lot. The Queen's Christmas tree up at the castle was also a rather good effort I think!

Guildford fog

I had the day off today so we decided to brave to cold to go and pick up some new gloves, and do a bit of window shopping in Guildford. As we got further and further from Oxted, the fog descended. By the time we got to Abinger Hammer, we couldn't see much more than 5 metres in front of the car, and by Gomshall we had some kind of black bin bag attached to to the underside of our car, and stinking as it melded itself to something important.. lol, oh well!

Anyway we stopped off at Newlands Corner on the way, for some chips & mayo to warm up, and decided to take a few piccies of the fog! I think it looks sufficiently frosty.

Scary teen slang

Lol. I am starting to think that perhaps I am no longer 'down wit' the youth of today', and 'talkin' da lingo'. I just thought I'd post this funny link that Ruth sent me. It's a BBC quiz on modern teen slang, so you can see how many words you actually recognise. Apparently, according to a study by Lancaster uni, teenagers use just 20 words to comprise a third of their speech. Lol, and I'm quite sure I don't know any of them. (I managed to get 3/10 in that little quiz through pure multiple choice guesswork, is it just me?!)

I was also thinking this earlier in the week when I went up to Barnet again, for the team meeting/all day lunch, and one of my colleagues mentioned that her teenage son referred to his girlfriend, as his 'link'. Now that's a new one on me! Apparently it signifies an 'open' relationship, but the 'link' can only go out with other people that are linked in some kind of network.. it all sounds far too complicated to me!

It's crazy how quickly this new language has developed, it sounds to me a little like a McDonald's menu crossed with Nadsat, the language of Alex and his droogies in Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange'. Eek, lets just hope the ultraviolence doesn't catch on too, or the jelly moulds come to that.



Here's a quick festive photo I snapped at Victoria, on my way back from London.. if you look really closely you can see a Christmas tree in there! I just thought it looked pretty..

Wow, fame!

This family history stuff is so interesting! Yesterday my uncle happened to mention that he'd been speaking on the phone to a relative of ours, and it came up in conversation that one of her uncles had been a famous art forger. Well, with a bit of investigation, I found him, his name was sitting right there in our family tree, with the profession of 'painter' listed! So it turns out that Tom Keating was my grandfather's cousin! You can read about him on wikipedia, see his work at the Bridgeman Art Library, more images here, and buy his work from the Sygun Museum of Wales Sale of Surplus Items on ebay. Wow, who'da thought we'd have someone famous in our tree. I love that his Dad was a painter/decorator!