Sunday, September 11, 2011

Hello there

Hello from London town!! The sun is shining, the boks won the rugby (not the best performance but hey, a win is a win) and I just found a pizza in the back of the freezer that I had completely forgotten about, all the markings of a great day! Hope you have a great one too :)

Kind regards

Richard

Monday, September 5, 2011

What to do in London when things go wrong and you need a surf

To some, surfing looks like activity or hobby loved by teenagers who wear hoodies and say “stoked” and "fully", have no real ambition in life and therefore could care less about sharks... fair call, there are some of those. To those outsiders though, there is no real substance associated with the subculture, which is therefore, in their minds at least neglected to the thrill seekers and lunatics.   

On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are the young at heart who recognise surfing as a “lifestyle” or “way of life”, to them I say right on, but they don’t help the stereotype, to these guys the world is one with their souls when they float along and ride the salty vibrations. Once upon a time, perhaps a teenage Devilears may have been guilty of this kind of thinking, unfortunately I reckon the barrier to entry in vocab and etiquette is higher than cost of equipment, stopping loads of people who would be keen to start out, but don’t really care for the whole philosophy. 

I see a meeting of worlds is necessary, SO we need a solution for the normal person, intrigued by the sport/lifestyle/whatever, that wants to build some enthusiasm and get excited for the water...

So as a side note, what is a South African who is dying for a surf doing in London? And more importantly, how is he surviving with over a month since his last taste of salt water?
The answer is Amazon.com and perhaps less surprising, stair surfing

Over the last 4 weeks I have sunken some of my pounds into my sanity, (which I think is a fair investment) into the following:


Sunny Garcia’s Surf - Shocking, but hey, it is 10 years old



Kelly Slater’s Surfer Pro – Brilliant, like dude











Tarzan Untamed – Hasn’t arrived yet, but I have high hopes



Rise of the Silver Surfer - Could perhaps have more surfing in it








Surfs Up (the game) - Hours of surfing fun! Highly recommended

Stair surfing is entirely different... pictures will follow shortly, at present I’m resting my ankle from a small collision with a wall and then a door and then a brief roll down some stairs and then a bicycle, hazards that are generally not associated with regular surfing

So what am I saying, that in some way actual surfing can be substituted by a few tv games... NO... get in the water people... but if you want to have a laugh and get super excited about waves and salt but are scared of surfers, try one of these, I reckon the Penguin one will sort you out, and then GET IN THE WATER,!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Chocolate is good for you!



I present to you... the one and only good piece of news for 2011:
This could change the world

CHOCOLATE IS GOOD FOR YOU


Finally...



Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Oh ya I have a blog

Good day

Sorry for my massive leave of absence, I went to South Africa for a small trip to wish my old man a good 60th bithday, it was rad, and I met a goat! No kidding it tried to eat my hand, good times, photos will follow shortly, and the later some funny stories, but for now know that I am alive and well and that London is treating me just fine, riots are now over which is great, and almost enough time has now passed for jokes to be made, so I shall wait

Groovy

For now

I bid thee well


Monday, July 18, 2011

Free, legal music downloads!

Hello from rainy London,
I have been kept in doors all week relegated to the couch by poor weather and permeable shoes. Thus I have spent my time drinking outrageous quantities of tea, eating chocolate and listening to some fantastic music!

I have rediscovered an amazing website called http://www.daytrotter.com/. Basically Day Trotter is an organisation that invites up-and-coming and often strange musicians to their studio, where the artists and bands perform their favourite tracks as "unplugged" "acoustic" sessions. These sessions are then uploaded online for the whole world to download for FREE, that's rad! Yes some of the music could be described as folk... which isn't really my vibe truth be told, but there are some free tracks from Death Cab, Guster, The Vaccines and Noah and the Whale, all quality acts, so if nothing else, sign up and download those, as they are well rad!

Get stuck in!!

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

London is just great

Today marks my 5th month in the island, it has been such an adventure so far, so I shall post some photos this evening from the last few months of city and wider country exploration...

Wimbledon this weekend (mixed with some inspiring poetry for a certain parent) got me thinking about life love and everything inbetween, so I thought I might share the outcome of such ponders:

Anacornicova,
Sharapova,
Eva Birnerova
I would watch the tennis with them on the sofa

They've got loads cash and heeps of fame
sadly they're all much the same
Its not their fault,they are not to blame
you see love means nothing in a tennis game

Anacornicova
Sharapova
Eva Birnerova
I wish I could picnic with them on the cliffs of Dover

I knew in love, I was starting to fall,
When watching them serve and return the ball
So I went on Russian brides dot com
But soon realized that they were not on
Now Wimbledons a whole year away
It'll be a while untill I get to see them play

Anacormicova
Sharapova
Eva Birnerova

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Awkward Moment #4

Awkward Moment #4
My work has a gym... awesome indeed, however, as I've discovered, gyms are very awkward places for people like me, some men (and few women) speak about their "guns", mine are 9mm guys...
Yes so I walked into the gym a few weeks ago, I had my super tight t-shirt on just to, you know... show off the nipples, I felt confident, I'd never been in a gym before but I figured, I can run and on demand I can lift a small bag of potatoes.
I walked into the most energetic room full of activity and and mirrors, instantly feeling my confidence slip away, people are big!
so i did what might have looked like some preemptive stretching and hopped onto a running machine, set it to a nice 10km/hour to at least look like there was some effort, and quickly realised that one of my legs is longer then the other, I run diagonally left when I'm not thinking, this realisation was perhaps most clear when I managed to step off the moving section onto the plastic railing, pretty close, I wish that I could say no one saw it, but lets face it, a gym is built wall to wall with mirrors, a smallish man leaping and grabbing at a running machine is just not going to fade into the background.
I made a half recovery, received some embarrassing advice and continued the run at 15km/hour in an attempt to win back some credibility, this worked for about 10 minutes at which time my legs where sending some pretty clear messages to the part of my brain that controls my decisions, so I stopped, tried hard to hide some necessary gasping and remain conscious while the outlines of my vision started to withdraw into dizzying darkness. After some post traumatic stretching I realised that I had managed to use my only real competitive advantage over this environment and my legs were over life in general.
So shrugging off my rather poor performance on the running machine of death and unhappiness I moved onto the arms, knowing that I can do whole heaps of lifting when it comes to like 8kg but no nothing more, an odd adaption to the wheel chair days of 2006, so the new plan pops into my head, "I shall hit the 8kg guys for the next 15 minutes, that'll look impressive", perhaps it would have, but the English, they use something called lb, so walking over to a weight and reading the label just didn't help. I picked up what I assumed was about doable, but no, wrong wrong wrong. I could just lift it off the rack, nothing more. Suddenly I was faced with two shocking thoughts, I can't move my arms up, and more embarrassingly, how will I get these ridiculous weights back on the rack.
Large problem, so now setting aside any remaining pride, I lowered them slowly on to the floor and picked each one up with two hands placing each one back individually.
Good times, I see why people gym
Haha who needs a television just go to the gym and watch the scrawny kid :)