Shallow Pockets Brimming with The Life Malaysian

I miss city life. I miss the buzz. I miss the eccentric inhabitants. I miss the tall buildings and the lights and the smells and the haunting balance between proximity and ambiguity.
I miss city life.

Adam and I went into Manchester last night and I finally had the chance to veer away from the touristy shopping district and away from the clubs and the nightlife and truly see a little glimpse of the city itself, in the daylight, vulnerable and uncostumed. There was a festival going on along the canal and they were featuring a "float-in movie" along the water. We honestly had no idea what to expect- the event link Adam found was a bit cryptic to be honest- but wow was it lovely. Something only a city would host on a Thursday night, the location peppered with college students and hip couples and urban families. It was so alive. I felt so alive.

On the way over from the train station I got to see the locks in action for the first time. I was wide-eyed watching the first boat enter and park but my eyes all but popped out of my head when a second barge pulled in! Such a skinny, skinny entrance with two larger than life vessels... it looked like it was going to be a mess of torn wood and broken rudders but the skill of the drivers! Effortlessly the boats glided in beside one another and patiently waited for the water level to rise. It was incredible! I see them parked all the time but I think this may be the first time I've ever watched them in action.

After a bit of wandering, and some pride swallowing to ask for directions, we made it to the 'theatre'. The set up was so well done! A little red carpet for the aisle with benches and lawn chairs facing the screen [the back wall of a parking deck], and AstroTurf for late-comers and beanbag-chair-bringers. It was very hipster-picnic-chic.

 
It was catered as well! But not your regular, run of the mill movie-goer food. There was a tent set up featuring a local Malaysian restaurant. The food and drink choice was a bit limited but it was undeniably delicious. Adam and I scarfed everything down in mere moments and it took every restraint to not go back for seconds, thirds, fourths... They did not have any desserts, which was good for my waistline and lack of self control, but they did have kegs upon kegs of Stella. Brits really like Stella... haven't figured it out but there are worse beers out there, I suppose.

No idea what it's called... couldn't pronounce it. But YUM all the same.

The only downside was that the restrooms were a trek away... but the view was worth it. There was this very cool photo-collage wall along one of the streets that the Manchester University art students put on for a project. Also- just look at the movie set-up from this angle. See what I mean? Cities. Wonderful.

 

Alright, to be honest... the screen size was a bit disappointing for the size of the wall, haha. But it was still nice. There had been a contest to decide which movie would be shown, some Twitter-based battle between Finding Nemo, The Life Aquatic and Jaws. All very different movies, all very different audience members.

The winner ended up being The Life Aquatic. Adam was hoping for a little Nemo but I've heard such good things about Aquatic... I was kind of excited about the outcome. It did seem to have the potential of being a really good movie but... we were idiots that forgot our coats and man does it get nippy when the sun dips away! We ended up abandoning the film halfway through to find bathrooms, warmth and pool.

 Europe has so much more street art... I love it. I love that graffiti artists are just that- artists. No gang tags, no vandalism- just beautiful pieces to pause and consider. I thought the painting of this woman was absolutely possessing.

Adam and I may have had a miserable, miserable showing for pool skills but look at the happy surprise! Home[ish]! Oh Georgia, no need to remind me. I miss you enough.

City. City. City. More Manchester nights, please&thankyou.

Shallow Pockets Brimming with Cheese & Judgement

This past weekend was a lovely surprise- mister Simon of Bath[/Bristol] came for a visit in humble little Macclesfield! Entertaining in Macc is no small feat. I don't know the weekend life too well because I honestly have only spent one full weekend here since my arrival [that's bad- I need to make more of an effort to explore it]. So when Simon said he'd rather come here than me to Bristol... I was nervous that he would be consumed with boredom 37 minutes in.

And maybe that was the case.

But we made a valiant effort!

Friday we went to a happening pub near my flat... Yeah, it was dead. No, worse than dead- there was a guy sitting alone at the table next to us reading. At 10pm. And he was wearing white socks [Simon has a lethal aversion to white socks].
Eh, but it was a year's worth of catch-up conversation and it was surprising to learn that I remembered more of Amsterdam than he did... which is hard to imagine. How in god's name have we maintained contact?
Facebook, you're moderately useful, it would seem.

Saturday was spent exploring my little town. Macc has a few decent qualities. Like the little food market in the indoor shopping... hallway, haha. It'd be insulting to call it a mall, but it does have some useful/interesting shops [if you can get past all of the stores dedicated to greeting cards and cell phone care...] but that is neither here nor there.

Simon couldn't get over the cheese. We got three kinds for dinner [and some disappointing olives... but they would be disappointing- they're olives. Blegh].

Then, apparently it's the beginning of [one of the many] football/soccer seasons here. So we did what any good Englishman does. We gambled.

Simon tried to teach me how the hell to finagle one of these sheets... so I winged it. And lost within a few hours, haha. Apparently the Wolves aren't a good team to place a bet on? Honestly I just bet for any team I'd heard the name of before. I thought it was a decent strategy...

Then we got coffee. Did some [unsuccessful- well, for me] shopping. And then we ended up at a pub around lunchtime. That's still so strange for me- to consider going to a bar before happy hour... but that's what you do here. AND it was lovely outside. So we sat on the patio and watched the most horrendous procession of wedding groups emerge from the chapel across the street. And took notes on the characters Macc churns out. And there are some characters, let me tell you. I learned a lot of English slang words!

Saturday night was actually really wonderful though. One of my co-workers, Adam, picked us up with his friend Johnny to meet up with a handful of their old schoolmates in a village outside of Macc called Bollington. Bolly [cute] claims to house the most pubs of any UK town, be that based on sheer volume, population or square foot I have no idea... but there were plenty. So we fabricated our own little makeshift pub crawl!

This was in... the second(?) pub we visited. I have no idea of the name... they're all double-names of some animal and some inanimate object like "Dog and Fiddle" or "Partridge and Rose" or something like that... it all kinda runs together after a while. Adam is on the left, Simon on the right. [And sorry for the spontaneous instagram- I FINALLY figured out how to get it to work over here so I got a little instagram-crazy.]

Jager and sambuca bombs... can you think of a more vile pairing?

I wish I wasn't so embarrassed about getting my camera out- these blog posts would be a lot more interesting if I captured events with pictures instead of words.

I'm gonna try to get better about it.

Simon had to have a cup of tea when we got back... [can you see my eyeroll encased in the ellipsis?] so we took very creative and classy drunken self-pictures. For you, my friends.

Shallow Pockets Brimming with Royal Marines

That's right- Royal Marines. They fancy, huh?

Over the weekend my co-worker James let me be a squatter in the spare bedroom at his place in Standish. It's beautiful, beautiful country. Rolling farms, dirt roads, the faint whiff of horse manure. I loved every bit of it. Friday night James and his girlfriend, Lesley, took me to the local pub and we walked there with their black lab, Molly(!), and I had my very first steak and ale pie. It was delicious but mahoosive! I couldn't even finish half!

Saturday was an early morning. Bacon butty's for a dawn breakfast, lots and lots of coffee, and then off to a Competition Clay Shoot held in honor of one of the community's fallen marines, Liam Elms. Edagrs set up a tent and submitted two teams of four [is that not the most badass tent you've ever seen? I helped erect that. Just sayin].

The way they set up the shoot was really well done. All of the tents were down in a flat area with fields around and then behind the tents the geography morphed into big hills. There were little off-road buggies taking people up and down the hills to shoot/spectate and each one was set up with the most spectacular view. They alo had a practice ground [for n00bs like me] and a down the line competition outside of the overall contest.

 This was at the practice portion. That's Becky Bream- she shoots for GB and is sponsored by Zoli- a BIGMONEY gun company out of Italy. The gun I'm using is worth thousands of pounds. Thousands. Anyways, she was kind enough to give me some pointers and I actually got the clay in the picture. Bazinga!

 Up at the competition grounds they were using a manual clay trap- I've never seen anything like it before. It was adorable and I hope the man in the picture wasn't offended by my intrigue!

 This was another first for me- they're called 'rabbit clays' and instead of vaulting the disks into the sky they bounce them on their side along the grass, so they move low and hop occasionally like rabbits. They're tricky little buggers.

 This was a particularly pretty site- they shot the clays over a lake so you got the gentle 'plop' 'plop' of the bits as they descended into the water.

 And this was pure comedy! Becky accidentally shot through the flag- but she also splattered the clay to bits! Louise, the lovely woman I work beside, is the one in charge of getting these marketing products and the flags are her babies. She was not happy on Monday, haha.

I took another shot at the practice fields later and increased from 30% accuracy to 50%- I was pretty damn proud of myself. I am determined to be at least mediocre when I go home!

After shooting, James' dad introduced me to the man that owned the land they were having the shoot on and he took us on a little tour of his home. OH. MY. STUNNING. Do people actually have real lives that look like this? It was an estate. Big house, even bigger land. Rich man hobbies like stables brimming with steeds, training grounds, a sprawling garden, food and flower alike, and a pond full of black swans. Um, hello Disney princess yard, can I has yew?

This is mildly morbid but... they use a lot of the horses to pull these carriages for funeral processions. Can you think of a prettier hearse?

This little guy had a full on mustache! He wouldn't stay still for a picture, though.

After the impromptu tour we got back for the medal ceremony and one of Edgar's teams won!! James' team, actually! Woohoo for team EB!

After the ceremony everyone started packing up to go home, change, and head out to the afterparty/auction. I can say one thing- the Royal Marines know how to have a good time. Yet again, I failed at capturing anything on film... aside from Lesley and Sally's private little dance number, haha.

Shallow Pockets Brimming with Countries Ringing Round

That's right folks- London during the 2012 Olympic Games!

No, sadly, I did not score tickets. I could have- I found some really truly amazingly cheap ones online but I was worried they'd be fakes so I didn't buy [surprise... they were the real deal]. SHUCKS. Really, I said a lot of other nasty derivatives of 'shucks' when I found out but what can you do? There will be other Olympics- hopefully I'll have the opportunity to be a live spectator in the future. Instead, this past weekend, I just mooched off of the energy and excitement of the city, saw the sights and wore my American-ness like no one's business.

 I really wanted a picture in front of our flag but a man and his son decided to take a squat right there... I couldn't think of a polite way to ask them to both move AND to please take the picture for me so I cut my losses and moved on.

 SO. MANY. PEOPLE. I started my journey in Battersea, which was just sleepy locals, but once I reached the Thames people started coming out of the water, I swear. I loved how decked out everyone was for their respective countries! See the orange tuxes? Netherlands, you rock it.

They had different little mascots up all around the Thames... I'm sorry that I have so many dang pictures with the statues. They were just too easy to find picture-volunteers for! And they reminded me of the little Buzz statues they had around Tech years ago! :)
[P.S.- I swear I actually never wear these leggings, though my blog tends to make them look like a tacky staple. Eh, I guess England just makes me proud to have President and Country.]

Can I please point out what an insignificantly small world we live in? The woman who volunteered to take this picture was from LOGANVILLE, GEORGIA. What?!! And she'd lived in Snellville for a long time as well! We just talked about our mutual stomping grounds for an eternity and then she and her friend pointed me in the direction of a BBQ place down the road. They even had queso. I FOUND QUESO IN EUROPE, CAITLIN!!

 

 It was really good bbq- pulled pork [and even though he recommended a vinegar based sauce- no, this is not fish and chips- they did have good ole thick bbq sauce] with cream corn and coleslaw and an A&W Cream Soda! Mmmm. I sat in this little bar for a while. It started to rain when I sat down and then the women's final for tennis between Serena and Sherapova came on so I hunkered down, made real tight buds with the bartender [we were cell phone twins afterall], and cheered my little outnumbered heart out. After Serena's win the bartender even made me a root beer float! The Dutch guy next to me wanted one as well and asked how strong it was [tee hee] but the Scottish lady next to him warned that root beer was an "aquired taste". One she wasn't so fond of, haha.

 

I meant to make it over to Hyde Park but it was getting late and Sandy and I had plans we did not want to miss. We decided we'd go Sunday afternoon instead. Our night out turned out to be a bit messy, a little wild and completely and utterly wonderful which meant our Sunday was unfortunately a bit harder to get through. We didn't make it to the park but it was rainy anyways so we pumped ourselves with bacon and OJ and had a lie in until my train. Altogether this weekend was pure indulgence and therapy. And just exactly what my host and I needed. Hopefully there will be a Manchester recreation soon!