Cooking

Last night I cooked myself goulash. It was amazing. I would like to think that it was because of cooking skills, but I think it's mostly due to reading the Hairy Bikers recipe. I had some lamb pieces and was going to make myself a lamb tomato/garlic dish with pasta. But as I was cooking the lamb, I thought 'Will, why don't you make some goulash?' and I replied 'Yeah, that's a great idea, I even have the caraway seeds and potatoes'. So I did. Hmm, reading that back over, I realise that I have just come across as having a split personality. While I do speak to myself when I'm alone, I don't really have conversations. I just say odd words or sing a few lines of songs. Anyway, the goulash was really nice and I had enough left for lunch, which I have just eaten. Bare good. When I went to Hungary with Uni, I basically lived off the stew. That was a cool trip. I used to be a big drinker then too. We would work 8 hours on the archaeological site, then go straight to the pub and I'd drink 6 pints of Stella. Everyday for a month. Weird. I can't stand beer now. The Hungarians we used to hang out with used to brew there own Palinka, which is a brutal fruit based spirit. It's like alcoholism in a bottle. We were hanging around the table and the talking switched to dares. I get surprisingly confident when it comes to dares, since I don't really care about much. Suffice to say, my friend dared me to drink 8 shots of palinka, in a row. I think the stuff was about 60%, because it was moonshine stuff. Not being the type to turn down a challenge, and living by my mum's mantra 'Always give into peer pressure; it makes you more popular', I happily accepted the dare. My friends lined up the shot glasses and I went for it. By the 7th shot, I was beginning to choke up. The 8th went down awkwardly, but it went down all the same. I just sat there and my friend's were like 'Cool, now what should we do?'. I looked around and I knew that I had earned the respect of my peers, particularly the stoic Hungarians and somber Scandinavians. Things weren't really going so well though. My stomach was really not happy. The alcohol was beginning to affect me too. My body was going into defense mode. It knew that it had been poisoned and that there was only one way to fix this situation - by vomiting. Thankfully, I had enough willpower over my body that I didn't vomit there at the table. My friend, Rich, looked at me and said 'Will, are you ok? You're visibly sweating'. I wasn't ok... 5 minutes ago I had drunk a lethal amount of homemade Hungarian spirit. I looked at Rich and grunted 'Er, no, I'm going home'. I stood up and stumbled out. I walked past another friend who was entering the pub, 'Hey Will, where you going?'. I looked up at him and grumbled 'home, uhhh'. Fortunately, he was a good friend and he left me alone, which is what I wanted. I got into my apartment block and crawled up the stairs. I felt my stomach was going mental. For some reason, I went to my room, instead of the communal toilets. I lied down on the bed and that's when the spinning started. It was hell. It like like my brain was metaphorically spinning at 500 rpm in my head. That was the final straw, my willpower was failing. I lurched up and ran to the toilets, I started vomiting before I reached the toilet bowl, but the majority went in. I stumbled back to my room and my bed. The process of bed/toilet repeated about 4 times in total.

It was a horrible experience. I don't really drink much nowadays, it just makes me feel really ill. There are a lot more drugs out there that are better for you. Though, I do still drink cider. That stuff is amazing. I don't understand why anyone drinks beer and not cider. It's like apple juice. Jaegarbombs are pretty nice too.

This is the only photo my Hungary field trip. I'm not even in the photo.

Strength

You should listen to this while reading.

I have been re-reading my blog, and I have noticed that most of my entries have spelling and grammatical errors. I guess that's because I type as I speak in my head, and I sometimes skip words etc since I can't type as fast as I can think. Hmm. Or maybe it's because I haven't fully grasped the English language, even though my parents spent a fortune so that I would (along with a solid education).

I have been training and climbing quite a bit lately, I'm not sure why, I think it's because I was fed up with being rubbish at climbing. My fingers are getting pretty strong, thanks to my training. Basically, I just hang off a small edge at varying arm angles, whilst holding a bungee cord in the other hand (which is attached to a bar). I can now do one armed pull ups on either arm - I performed the feat in front of a witness, who was clearly in awe and very impressed.

I was going to write something interesting, but I have forgotten. I might write something tonight. I can't right now since my typing is making a loud noise and my boss is looking directly at me. I'm pretending to write an email (I'm trying to looking engaged and occasionally I nod).

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 My boss has left work so I will continue writing. I still don't have anything to write about, so here are a few photos.
 

 This is my chin up bar and fingerboard at my parents home. I get strong by hanging off it.

 These are some of my friends: L to R, Katie, Jez, Tom, Francis, Alex and Nick. I like them. Looks like Jez said something funny, since Tom, Francis and Alex are smiling. Those guys, there's always laughter when I'm around. I guess that's because I'm there to witness it. I assume there's also laughter when I'm not around, I just can't hear it.

 These are some of my northern climbing friends: L to R, Rich, Ned, Nacho (not really a friend, I've only met him once (that evening)), Alex, Chris and Nick. I'm the worse rock climber out of the group, and they made it clear that I understand that. Fortunately, I had the best hearing and the most potent wit, so I made up for my poor climbing skillzzzzzzzzz blluuuuuudddd.

 These are my new shoes. I tried to get my parents dog to pose with them, but she refused (she's a panicky little thing). My parents cat 'Rollo' is in the background, my mum deliberately overfeeds my cats so that they don't threaten the birds (an obsese cat is a lethargic cat).

 This is me, looking like an utter dweeby chump on my friends motorbike. I don't ride.

Here is my niece, Georgia. She's a funny child. I'm her favourite uncle.

Punching

I had a big family gathering the other weekend, mostly the Abbotts (rather than people from my mothers side of the family). It was a good day, it was nice to see my nieces Grace and Georgia. They like me more than my brother, I think that's because I'm a fun person and I also helped raise them from when they were babies. I had graduated from uni when Grace was born, so I was unemployed for a while, so I was around a lot to help look after her. And when Georgia was born, I was working contracts with the BBC, so I was again, unemployed a lot. They're a funny duo. Tracey hosted the event, she's a kick boxing instructor, which I found interesting since she's rather short. Well as Yoda once said 'Size matters not, judge me by my size do you?'. Hmm, I'm not comparing Tracey to Yoda, except they are both quite short (Yoda is very short). Tracey isn't green or fictional. She has a body bag thing set up. Hmm when I write 'body bag', I should have written 'punch bag', I guess I could have deleted that and you'd have been none the wiser, but I felt that I would leave it in - in the interests of not ruining my stream of consciousness prose. So she had this punch bag set up and I start punching it (without gloves) and then a crowd started forming (This happens a lot with me, because I'm generally the most interesting person in the group, people stay near me in case I do something interesting. Or if they're not near me and they hear that I'm doing something interesting, they all go 'Oh cool, Will is doing something interesting, lets see!', even if they're in mid conversation with someone else)(That was of course not entirely true, Tracey and Nick (my cousin) had recently bought the house so we were all on a guided tour of sorts and when I saw the punch bag, I was immediately fixated and that stopped the tour, so when I said that a crowd had formed due to my interesting personality, I was slightly distorting the truth - a crowd was already there, due to the aforementioned guided tour.)

So I started punching this bag, and then Tracey came over and said 'Hey Will, put these gloves on'. I complied because my knuckles were hurting (it made me think about bare knuckle fighters and what a painful life they live). I put on the gloves and started punching away. BAM BAM BAM, 3 hit combo. It was like I was born to punch things. Everyone stood in awe and Tracey said 'Wow, you've got a good punch!'. My dad just shouted 'SHIT! He's a natural!'. I heard one guy in the back whisper to his friend (I heard due to my super hearing) 'Christ, is that guy a professional?', and his friend replied 'I don't know, but he should be, with punches like that'. That didn't happen. The punching of the bag did, and Tracey complimenting me, but not the guys whispering, or my dad saying 'SHIT! He's a natural!'. Anyway, it turns out that I'm quite good at punching. I think it's because of my climbing. It's made my back, core and arm muscles rather powerful, which are vital for a good punch. I always wondered about how my climbing what help my combat abilities, I used to think that being a climber, with a strong upper body would assist me in a fight. Turns out that it does, I can punch very well. Tracey said that I could have a lesson with her, to learn kick boxing. But I declined since while my upper body is strong, I can't say the same about my legs. They're like chicken legs.



If you want to see what my uni life was like, look here:
https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=8B5D2DB1D7AB99F8&id=8B5D2DB1D7AB99F8!110&sc=photos#cid=8B5D2DB1D7AB99F8&sc=photos

Here's a photo of my brother (James), my sister (Lucy) and me at the family reunion thing I mentioned earlier.