London Ninja

It just sounds right, doesn’t it? “Bank Holiday” instead of “Memorial Day”, “President’s Day”, or some other lame name. The US needs to just call it as it is…a day when the banks are closed. “Bank Holiday”, suckas.

Everyone in London will be watching Manchester United playing Chelsea in the European Cup Finals tonight. It’s revolved around some regional sport where teams of grown men run up and down a patch of green for a long time, occasionally kicking that ball into a net. Yeah, it will be bloody exciting. Wish you were beer.

Catching my second show in London this weekend. The first one a couple of months ago was the quintessential West End London theatre experience…Les Miserables. Yes, Les Mis. Why not?…it started here in London, not Broadway.

For my second show in London I am attending happens to be one of my current favourite entertainment acts on TV with a Brit named Derren Brown. His Trick or Treat show is currently on the air.
There are some amazing tricks that Derren Brown does and I’ll see how it all plays out in the 3rd row on Friday night.

Who is Derren Brown?
If you are unfamiliar with Derren Brown, he practices magic and mentalism. Now I have been quite into magic and illusion since I was a child, watching David Copperfield perform tricks like walk through the Great Wall of China. There was something in the bad hair, slutty dancers, and mysticism that was very appealing to me as a small, fat Ninja-to-be with bad hair and no slutty dancers. There have been others that have come along that brought magic into the pop culture like David Blaine and Criss Angel but none in the same way as Derren Brown. I would say Derren Brown is around 60-70% jedimindtricks and the rest illusion/mentalism. I’m not talking paduan level jedi, Yoda level jedi I speak. Derren’s had a number of absolutely enthralling shows including using suggestion to get advertisers to create what he had advertised for them to do, fake a seance, hypnotise someone and put him in the middle of Morrocco as a “trick”, train a grandma to almost win a poker championship not having ever played poker, playing Russian Roulette, etc etc. It’s not just gimmicky magic tricks like magicians in Vegas, this is Jedi. We’ll see how he defends with my Ninja Mind Tricks Friday night.

The best thing about it all is how Derren describes his illusion and trickery:

“I am often dishonest in my techniques, but always honest about my dishonesty…”

Trudat. I’m also always sincere with my insincerity. See what I did there? I am always correct with my incorrectness.

Word: Sunnys
Definition: Tinted spectacles placed over the eyes to avoid excessive UV Rays entering the Iris. aka..sunglasses.
Usage: “Bloody hell, you’re wearing your sunnys! I reckon I can’t even find mine since I don’t recall the last time there was sun. Rubbish.”

Boris Becker has become mayor of London after a tight race against the incumbant Ken Livingstone. This is way more important than the Clinton / Barack race because we have some serious ASBOs in London stabbing kids and such.

The great thing with Boris is that not only does he have the foresight to clean up London, he also has the forehand to kick your arse on the tennis court. Not only does he have the strong passion for serving our city, he also has a 148 mph serve to ace you all day. Not only does he have the background in politics to be able to deliver on his promises, he also has a backhand that can win points. I can go all day…..

Not only can Boris win, he can Wim-ble-don….ok. I will stop here.

[Boris does look slightly different than his Wimbledon days, but I guess he's a bit older and wiser. I could dice it and slice it all I want but that man still hits a mean slicing backhand.]

I used to scour the different budget airlines including RyanAir and EasyJet for cheap flights to different places in Europe. That is until my friends Joe and Stacy showed me the light. That light is Skyscanner. It basically does all that work for me. I can pick a set of days and it tells me what locations are under 50 quid. I can choose a location and it will give me the chart on prices.

The best thing is that it encompasses a whole bunch of different airlines. It’s something that Travelocity and Orbitz in the US sort of attempt to do but pretty much fail at. I book all of my travel through Skyscanner. The only drawback is that its prices aren’t updated automatically. Some of the prices are 3-5 days stale, which means it’s not good for last minute travel deals.

It’s been a while since I’ve done travel blogs. The main reason is because they take a shitload of time. But since one of the goals of this blog is to bring my reading audience(stay-at-home-mums) with me to all the places I go along with how to do it, I will make the effort to document every trip…including Oxford, which I did in 2007. Yes, 2007…when Ron Paul had a strong chance of winning the election. My other goals are to inform other Londoners on how to take these trips and also so that some rich dude reads my delightful blogs and offers me 2 million quid in angel funding for transforming London Ninja into the next big travel portal. Not holding my breathe too hard for that, though.

How to get there?
There’s a very convenient coach that goes from London to Oxford in about 1-1.5 hours. It is probably the nicest coach I have been on with wifi and air conditioning and all that. Very frequent and convenient. Costs around 15 quid.

What to do?
1. Visit the Christ Church College

This is apparently one of the oldest and best known colleges in Oxford, with many famous alum like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. It is set in a nice area and does make you ponder how the raising of capital gains tax, if not indexed to match an expected rising inflation rate, could deteriorate the rate of investment capital.

2. Visit Harry Potter’s lunch hall
Part of the Christ Church. This place is MAGIC. (See what I did there?)

3. Have a pint at the Turf Tavern
Highlight of the trip was here. You walk through this tiny alley to arrive at one of the top pubs in the country, sporting as many hand pulled bitters as there are cockroaches in a Tijuana taco joint (a plethora). Apparently this place used to be a brothel outside the city walls where the priests would go in the wee hours of the night(you can still see the old city walls next to it). I didn’t understand that…thought they just held “Sunday School”.

How much does it cost?
My first B&B experience, which was at a reasonable rate of ~60 quid, including a full English breakfast with over easy eggs, sausage, tomato, bacon(Canadian style), biscuits, and a shitload of tea. Bus ride is 15 quid as mentioned above. Everything else is just the standard UK bloody expensive…

Verdict: 3 / 5 Ninjas. Good weekend trip..Worth of 1-2 days of fun.