Hurrah, I got one! Indeed, I was there at Times Square NYC taking in the atmosphere and also getting to grips with navigating around the city blocks. When I gave it some thought, the grid layout was actually pretty convenient, so long as you knew the two intersecting streets, you could locate any place in the city.

Osa had met me at Penn Station because she was coming from her other house in Long Island. We walked down to Times Square which is just a few blocks from the Station and my first Wii sighting was this:

 

Wii at Toys R Us at Times Square

Couldn’t miss that eh? This was the Continue reading →

Indeedy, my travel adventures have been coming thick and fast, in fact it’s been a struggle to keep up-to-date on the blog. Too much happens in too short a time period. I’m constantly playing catch up but I hope to manage it.

I’ve gotten myself to Washington DC and will be going to NYC again tomorrow. There shall be more posts shortly to fill in the Florida gaps but I thought I would make a different type of post today.

One of my interests has always been computer gaming and this weekend sees the launch of two new next-generation consoles. The Playstation 3 and my personal favourite the Nintendo Wii.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.. (do I have to grow up just yet?)

Since I will be in New York tomorrow, I’m going to go attend the big launch party at Toys ‘R Us, Times Square NYC. There will be acrobats, live music, pyrotechnics and more. It is said that Reggie Fils-Aime, the funny looking/acting chief marketing officer of Nintendo,will be there to hand out the first Wiis to the lucky gaming public.

Reggie of Ninty!

I’m gonna go along, snap some photos and take in the atmosphere for the night. I might even snap up a Wii if there will be enough to go around.

So, check back soon when I will post up my experiences and shots from the event. Should be fun!

Meet Alex, Kate and little Eloise. Our new bouncy, bubbling fun family.

They were my very kind and generous hosts for a whole week. I had a lot of fun with them and not necessarily related to getting to see Savannah for I was there to get to know Alex’s new wife and baby daughter!

Alex who I met at my first year at Teesside doing Computer Animation had decided he didn’t like the course in England and chose to go to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) instead to do Illustration. The SCAD workload is really quite something, whereas in Teesside we had all semester to complete about 5-7 projects to do from our 5 modules, at SCAD it was more like 2 projects every week, yes they were smaller projects but they still required many hours a day to finish them in time before you get the next project. No slacking here!

Alex certainly stuck to this regime and would for most of the day be at his desk drawing. Therefore I left him alone for most of my stay and hung out with Kate and Eloise.

We took some walks around the local neighbourhood of Savannah which was very pleasant.

Some example Savannah Architecture

There were some walks in the park, the weather was fantastic, it still shocked me not having to wear anything more than a T-shirt, in November! (I’m sure I’m repeating myself there).

I admire a fountain in the Park

This park fountain has been the setting of quite a few scenes in movies. I’m sure it gets a lot of use from the SCAD film students too.

Kate pushed Eloise in a pram as we prowled the rather scenic streets of Savannah. Eloise isn’t quite yet 1 yet at 10 months but she babbled away happily for much of the time, I wandered what she was trying to say or convey.

Kate is a lot of fun to be with, she’s a pretty young girl and has a great smile. She’s one of those fashion fiends and quite conscious of her self-image. She needn’t worry about such things so much for her image was fine and people look for more than that in friends and close loved ones. 😀

It amused me when she asked if her hair was alright when we sat waiting outside a SCAD building for Alex to finish his class. Kate apologised for asking when I told her that she looked perfect, Kate turned out to be the most apologetic person I’ve ever met, she says sorry to just about everything. Despite my chiding that she needn’t apologise so much to me, she apologised about the apologising and then I new this to be a lost cause! Hehe. I love peoples quirky character traits.

In front of me there was a statement scrawled on the back of a signpost.

A message on the sign-post

I pointed out to Kate that the message has been my own personal motto for a long time now. She chuckled and tended to Eloises’ gurgles. I wondered what kind of person would feel so inclined to spread our motto there.

Alex emerged after a while with some friends, one of whom was a neighbour from across the street. A lot of students were living on the same road even though the SCAD campus is very dispersed.

SCAD friends on campus, the Wilsons on the right.

Much of my time was spent… Continue reading →

P.S

I am writing more entries on my laptop than what you see on the site here, but having trouble uploading them… stay with me folks, a lot of cool stuff coming your way as soon as I can muster it all.

P.P.S

Am I allowed to put a P.S before a post? Shouldn’t it be B.S? Would people take offence at that? Pr.S? P.P.S?? Ooooh the acronymage.

P.P.S.S

Hi friends,

So, what happened after I tried to get some shut eye in New York City Penn Station?

Well I managed about 3 hours of snoozing and awoke with time to spare before my train was due. Got a fruit smoothie to wake me up (almost as good as coffee but nicer) and also decided to purchase a couple books to read since I had a 14 hour journey ahead of me.

Train arrived on time and left about 5 minutes later with me settled on-board.

I attempted to catch up some more on lost sleep and dozed on and off through out the journey. When I awoke hungry, I ate the sandwhich and snacks that I had purchased at the same time as fruit smoothieness. Read quite far into my first book which, set in the near future, was about an autistic man who has been offered a treatment for his condition but it may change the very essence of who he is.. should he go for it?

Pretty good book, nothing fanciful in the language or narration but there is a bit of drama to keep things chugging along. A pretty good insight into what it must be like to be autistic, I’m always interested to see how other people cope with their own disabilities. The book is called “The Speed of Dark ” by Elizabeth Moon.

The Amtrak train took a long time.. however I enjoyed watching the scenery change. Whenever I awoke from a doze, the light had changed, the foliage had changed colour and the types of environment we passed was always shifting.

As we hit South Carolina and eventually Georgia, suddenly lush green junglelike shrubbery was everywhere and white sand, palm trees! My gosh, how dramatic the change, and yet it’s the same country, just passing along the East Coast..

The train was over 2 hours late in the end. It rolled into Savannah station close to 11pm, I had been sat in the same seat for 16 hours.. I stepped out into the warm evening and stretched my legs.

Concerned that my hosts were worried, I made for a payphone but was interrupted by an older black dude asking I needed a taxi, yes I decided, unsure if it was worth walking the indicated (on my GPS PDA navigation set-up) 3 miles at night.

Black dude drove me faithfully to the address I had been given and as I got my bags out, my friend from my fresher years at Teesside University stood waiting on the porch.

I felt tired and happy.

To elaborate, the reason for my severe delay in finishing the rest of the Montreal blog postings can be attributed to the frantic headrush of the past 2 weeks that have seen me tackling the huge logistics of an extended Florida trip.

If you can recall, I have been asked to pick up a van for a company and drive it back some 1500 miles to Vermont. I have decided to go ahead with this because I would be paid for my time, have the travel costs covered, get an opportunity to do some real-life US State-wide driving and also visit a large number of friends, family or relatives.

In order to visit relatives in a timely manner, I requested if I could get a paid Amtrak rail pass to chuff along the East Coast and make stop overs to visit people possible. Luckily the company agreed.

The huge logistics problem came about when I realised that I would have the mammoth task of coordinating a rally of visits with about 25-30 odd people that I have addresses and invitations for all the way down to Florida. I would need to schedule a day or two for each person and work out which Amtrak station is closest and if I need a Greyhound from there or not. Then I would need to check which days were suitable with everyone and make sure that it all lined up with the minimum of ‘backtracking’ up the railways.

Whew.

I think I’ve pretty much accomplished a good array of dates all one after the other which succeed their way down the East Coast.

My plans are:

WAY DOWN (Amtrak Train & Greyhound Bus)

Vermont – A ride down with my host Chuck as he had to go to NYC anyway

New York – Visit a friend of my mothers living on Mulberry Street, China Town in Manhattan.

South Carolina – My distant cousin who lives in UK but has a work placement for a year in the US

Savannah – My old hall mate from the first year at University who went to the States to do a different course

Florida – Visit a large number of relatives who have settled up and down the length of Florida

PICK UP VAN, DRIVE BACK UP

Stop off at any of the above who will be free to have me again

plus

Washington D.C – My cousin who I visited 3 years ago also

New York – My grandparents in Long Island.

Vermont – Drop off van and work out how to get a lift back home!

Thus it commences!

“Entering NYC”, a gull watches the cars pass under its domain

What happens now?

Continue reading →