London Ninja

Word: Lorry
Definition:a large motor vehicle for transporting heavy loads. A medium to large sized truck.
Usage: Just two days after the end of British Summertime, the first snowfall of the year saw a lorry driver killed when his vehicle collided with another lorry on the M40 in Buckinghamshire.

So last night, London got the first snow of the season. As a matter of fact, it was the first time it has snowed in October in 74 years. Last year, we didn’t get it until like April or so. It was so unexpected that someone even died:

Just two days after the end of British Summertime, the first snowfall of the year saw a lorry driver killed when his vehicle collided with another lorry on the M40 in Buckinghamshire.

It’s almost like when it rains in California and you get massive car accidents because people forget how to drive in the rain and also because the grease on the road makes it quite slippy. Regardless, it’s pretty amazing to get snow before all of the leaves have fallen. Probably something to do with global warming and that Hummer that you drive to work to work every day and all those ESPN printouts you bring into the loo to read as you go #2. Shame on you.

It’s about halfway through the season, but if you want to watch NFL in the UK, there are some options I outlined previously. There’s also a purely online way of watching NFL, the NFL Game Pass by Yahoo. This is only available outside of the US and looks like a nice deal for those that don’t have a cable box to plug a Slingbox into in the US or can’t be bothered.

I didn’t really watch last year’s game between the Giants and the Dolphins. Mainly because those teams sucked and the weather was bollocks. I did, however, watch the Chargers-Saints game from home on the BBC. It was actually a good game, except for the fact that my home team Chargers lost and played like arse. It was also very cool that I got to watch it on my tele instead of over Slingbox like I normally do.

Here are two main differences on watching the NFL in the UK vs what is shown on my Slingbox:

1. There are no James Brown newsbreaks. As in…every time something happens in the league, like a TD, American channels cut to it to see the 77 yard Touchdown that was just thrown. Well, they announce it, and then we just watch the players huddling. WTF.

2. There are no commercials. Before you start thinking this is great, I think it’s almost worst than having commercials. Basically, every time the commentators say, “We’ll be back after these messages”, the BBC cuts over to Jerry Rice, some Brit, and some other American dude. Jerry Rice was a great wide receiver. Let me repeat…Jerry Rice was a great wide receiver. That’s all I have to say about that. I would have preferred Bud commercials.

3. It’s clear nobody knows WTF is going on…including the BBC host, who you have to listen to every 10 minutes because there are no commercials. I think it’s because there’s no tea break like in cricket.

Apparently, the UK economy officially on the brink of recession, which means the currency has dropped significantly. This means it’s probably a good time to visit the London Ninja as the pound is trading at a pretty good low. When I first came here, it was roughly 2 to 1, now it’s at around 1.6 to 1. Probably means Brits won’t be taking those shopping trips to New York anymore just to buy up the town. How times have changed.

On the bright side, it means that pints in the UK are now an acceptable rate of 3.3gbp * 1.6 = $5.25. That’s not bad for a bigger imperial pint.

I finally got to watch Dark Knight, like 3 years after it came out. I’m not sure how relevant this review is, since I’m assuming most people have watched it. My friend Bitcharse asked me to review it so I will make this exception and come out of my self-imposed no-movie-review rule. I also have a self-imposed rule that when I break that other rule, that I only do UK movies. Let’s see how this goes…it’s been a while since my last review.

IMAX Experience
So I waited so long so I can watch it on the IMAX screen. Unfortunately, we actually missed our initial date because we were in San Diego attending a wedding. They graciously moved us to the Thursday after we came back, which was very nice of them. Unfortunately, we totally missed that also! Our options after that was really to go back with a sob story about my sick aunt and my epileptic bengal cat. The result? 11:30pm showing on Friday night. Bloody hell. Yes, the tube stops running at like 11:30pm. And yes, we didn’t get the ideal seats.

So overall, the experience is likely to be better than watching it in a proper theatre with stadium seating and Sony or THX sound. The problem, of course, is that IMAX theatres are made more for sprawling landscapes. While there were some impressive scenes with a lot of detail, you are too close to the screen to watch Batman flying across the screen and beating up bad guys. I don’t think you really gain that much from watching this movie in an IMAX theatre.

Plot
The movie could have been shorter to conform to Hollywood standards. I personally enjoy 2.5-3 hour movies so it wasn’t a problem for me. There were some sideplots, however, that I felt unnecesary. Like the story with the Asian dude (not that I don’t support more ninjas on the theatre), the story of the accounting guy at Wayne Enterprises. None of these were necesary. Overall, however, I was pretty engaged…even at 1:45am.

Action
No discernable CGI. It felt like all stunts were real old-school stunts. It’s pretty refreshing to see real action after watching the Hulk and Ironman. I do think that they made the BatMobile a bit too powerful.

My biggest gripes
1. Batman should have killed the Joker much sooner.
2. How is it that Batman’s body armour didn’t block Harvey Two Face’s bullet at the end? I thought that’s the whole point?
3. Last but certainly not least…Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Look, I’m not that superficial. And even if I am, I only rate chicks on “JITT“. But man, talk about a downgrade. I’m not saying Katie Holmes was totally hot, but Maggie Gyllenhaal is no Katie Holmes. She’s probably not even Sarah Palin. It was distracting for me. Just Sayin…

Overall Rating
Action, Fugly Maggie (yeah, I came up with that all on my own), dead actor playing Joker, comic book character. There’s nothing not to like here. I give this movie all mah ninjas:

Verdict: 5 / 5 Ninjas.

When I first came to the UK, I was pretty skeptical of RyanAir, the revolutionary low cost leader of flights in the UK. As a matter of fact, I made fairly disparaging remarks about them in a previous blog during a different time. Since then, however, I have taken so many Ryanair flights, I have come to love it like I love cutting my nails…and by cutting my nails, I mean scooping out the toe jam and spreading it on toast. Just saying…

Earlier this year I did a finance programme at LBS where we examined RyanAir as a case study. Wow. 15-20% margins for an airline (even Southwest and Jetblue are in the single digits) A Dumb-arsed CEO that won’t take out leverage for the company. A hard-arsed CEO that had a college intern build the reservation website to be brutal with expenses (the website is fugly). A company known for asking its own staff to bring in stationary. A flying experience full of advertisements and no joke…lottery ticket sales during the flight.

So why do I love it?
1. Yes, it is cheap. And by cheap, I mean dirt cheap. And by dirt cheap, I mean sometimes it’s even free. By free, I mean you still pay a bunch of charges for things outside of the ticket. Here are the prices for my last set of tickets purchased, including one this past Sunday when my mates ODJ and KokoBWare come into town in November.

Here are some of my last trips:
1. London Stansted (STN) to Pisa (Florence) (PSA) – 18.99GBP out of pocket. (1-way)
2. London Stansted (STN) to Hamburg Lübeck (LBC) – 25.80GBP for two people
3. London Stansted (STN) to Carcassonne (CCF) – 4.84 for two people
4. London Stansted (STN) to Tours Loire Valley (TUF) – 4.84 for two people
5. London Stansted (STN) to Belfast (City) (BHD) – 4.84 for two people
6. London Stansted (STN) to Shannon (SNN) – 112gbp for four people

2. It is always on time. Apparently RyanAir staff are judged on their timeliness. By doing this, RyanAir has been able to achieve the title for the most on-time airline in the world.

I understand it’s not perfect…but neither are my nails for that matter. Perfect would be no toejam. I have toejam. Ce La Vie.

I have been blogging less frequently for a few reasons:

1. I’m completely integrated into the British society and therefore things aren’t new and exciting anymore. I drink proper tea a few times a day and actually ask my mates if they’re “all right” now as a way to greet them.

2. The US elections are here and I have to catch up on the debates. I usually do not like to bring up politics in public forums as they tend to offend…and I don’t like to offend…like when I called you a fat-so. Um…so I don’t support either presidential candidate. Here’s the thing: I don’t like old foagies so I don’t like McCain. I also don’t like terrorists, so I don’t like Obama. There’s that. I hope I didn’t offend anybody with those simple sweeping statements. Oh, and btw, McCain dislikes colored people.

3. Madge divorced Guy Ritchie without a prenupt. Yes, this was on the front page of the daily Tube paper, the Metro. Yes, the Metro is the only source of news I read. Yes, £150m.

4. We’re in the middle of a global economic meltdown not seen since the Great Depression with whole countries on the brink of bankruptcy. Maybe that makes Iceland one of my top 5 destinations for 2009…unless the inhabitants resort to cannibalism.

So all of those tough external factors and the fact that I’ve been traveling but not having sorted through all my pictures yet have contributed to a gradual slowing of my blog output. I will try to reverse this trend for the rest of the quarter…unless McCain wins.