London Ninja

So I have been away for most of February on another trip to the bay area.

Here are the highlights of the trip:

1. My name apparently is on the TSA shitlist. Every time I land in the US, they pull me aside and give me a rectal examination. And by rectal, I mean colonic.

2. We found out that my boy Nelly’s cable service has some karaoke, which makes for some great fun with Vodka / Grapefruit juice martinis. I could have sworn I am done with vodka but you know what New York city will do to you every time. Somehow we ended up singing Do You Really Want To Love Me at some bar at 3 in the morning. Rough.

3. As a result of #2, I missed my flight in the morning and as a result missed the Superbowl in the bay area. Bollocks

4. When staying at a hotel with a hotel bar that’s the “cool bar” in town, you know that you’re: a.) in trouble b.) in a shitty town.

5. Got to hang out with friends, including those in New York, San Diego, and the Bay Area including:

Yeah, we go way back.

6. Had a rough Thursday night AND a rough Friday night. See #4 and Friday night was attributed to San Diego.

7. Ate 823 burritoes in 3 days in San Diego. You just gotta do it. Carnitas, California, and Carne Asada mostly.

8. Rented the Stang convertible that I was able to peel out on a few times with the top down. You know what I say when I hit a red light with that rental? “Rollin’ in my 5.0 With my rag-top down so my hair can blow”. That’s what I say.

9. Visited my dentist of 5 years. I promise not to take good quality dental care for granted. My teeth actually feel clean and at no point was I asked to lick the blood off of my front teeth.

10. Brought over 1 luggage and returned with 3. I actually purchased an Eagle Creek backpack (best backpacks in the world) to hold my shit. That’s how weak the US Dollar is…and how good those wasabi almonds at Trader Joes are. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re missing out.

Those were mostly the highlights. All in all it was a pretty rough trip and it’s good to be back in the cold. That summer-type of weather is pretty rough on a body. Great to get back to the gloomy grey of bollocks. Bollocks.

I will give a very quick Doogie Howser style recap of my most recent trip. (Yeah, I watched Doogie…who didn’t?)

Stockholm: Venetian-like. Has lots of potential. Will be back.
Tallinn: Most amazing medieval city I have ever been to. 2 days max.
St Petersburg: Top 5 cities in the world for sheer beauty. Bottom five for accessibility and attitude.
Helsinki: Beautiful modern city with friendly people and cafes. May be lacking in history but a great city.

Since pictures are worth a thousand words, here’s a beautiful one of St Petersburg at night for you. Will give more details on my amazing trip within 3 months.

St Petersburg at night.

For pictures of Tallinn, Helsinki, and Stockholm at night, please see above.

To close out Lisboa, let me just highlight how politically correct everything is there. Now I’m not one to be all that PC about anything. I call it as it is but am pretty open to everything, having lived in San Francisco for over 5 years.

WTF?!?! This makes both my ninjitsu sensei AND Shaka Zulu turn in their graves.

So on that note, how many Mexicans does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Juan. (Yes, for a limited time you can get presale tickets to my Comedy Tour next summer.)

For the first time in my life, I will not be in the US for the holidays. Even when I lived in North Carolina, my buddy ODJ and I made it a point to drive back in time for the holidays with the family. Yes, folks. 1 car, 8 states, 6 days. It was particularly interesting when you throw in these ingredients:
1. Steak every night (lasted 2 nights)
2. No shaving all week (wasn’t that bad)
3. Excessive flatulence
4. Excessive belching
5. An endlessly looping cassette tape of Smashing Pumpkins
6. Record snow storm levels
7. Altitude sickness while snowboarding in Colorado

So with that said, this year I will not be eating fried rice with the grandmum and folks. Doesn’t make sense when you’re in Europe and can experience things like Swedish meatballs. This year we will be embarking on the coldest holiday season of my life. Here’s where we will be going along with our 4 NYC friends: Workmonkey, Jilly_Billy, Kym and Chaz. I’ll show these Americans how we Brits take down bitters.

The Trip
12/24 = Stockholm, Sweden
12/25 = Tallinn, Estonia
12/27 = St Petersburg, Russia
12/31 = Helsinki, Finland
1/1 = Back to the Queen

Why these cities?
Because nobody has been to these places. I actually didn’t pick these cities, but have always wanted to go to St Petersburg…and let me be clear that this will be the last time I go to Russia on a tourist visa. I forget how much of a pain it is to get a visa. Russia makes it twice as hard.

Is it going to be cold?
No. It’s going to be bloody cold. And by cold I do mean hypothermic. I have a few items that may battle some of the cold, but we will see. I may lose feeling in parts of my body…namely in the scrotum area. C’est La vie.

Had a great trip the past 10 days, rounding out the travel with a stop to see the folks in San Diego. Let me break my trip down by the daily highlights:

Day 1: Cotijas Pollo Asado Chicken Burrito
Day 2: Karinas shrimp plate with tortillas, etc
Day 3: Las Olas Chile Verde platter with tortillas, etc
Day 4: Aibertos Carnitas Burrito

What I did not get the chance to hit was this tortilla factory that serves rad carnitas burritos for lunch only that ODJ and AK have been touting. Gotta save something for next time…something other than cleaning out my parents’ garage.

As a bona-fide jetsetter, I am in the middle of my London->New York-> San Francisco -> LA -> San Diego -> London trip…currently in the bay area. The biggest difference I’ve seen since I’ve left is how big of an impact the weak American dollar has been having on visitors. All of the folks I’ve talked to that are here from the UK or DE have been on shopping binges, buying handbags, iPods, electronic toilet bowl cleaners, you name it. I guess it’s good I’m a bloody Brit and everything here is cheap…but then again everything outside of the UK is cheap if you’re a bloody Brit.

Ok, I have listed all of the places we may go to in 2008. Not all of the places will fly given my limited holiday, but we will try to hit as many as we can. The biggest trip I want to make in 2008/2009 is a trip to Africa. Yes, the Africa that may give a teacher 40 lashes, 6 months in jail, a fine, and a bowl of dog feces rubbed on her head for calling a teddy bear Muhammed. WTF. And yes, the same Africa that theatened the life of my uncle once.

The story, told many a times over some fine Taiwanese beer at family get-togethers, goes something like this: Large Taiwanese tour bus full of wealthy Taiwanese businessmen touring through Africa were pulled over by the police as they were leaving South Africa. The policemen came onboard the bus, shot rounds into the air with their AKs and told everybody to give them everything they got. They then proceeded to take all luggage on board. After they took everything, they rubbed goat feces on everybody’s face and then used a bare hand to remove the throbbing heart of a man while exclaiming “KA-LEEE-MAAAAA”. It’s all true. Oh, and they had chilled monkey brains for dinner.

2008 Travel Destinations

Europe
Paris (kind of a given, but figure I would put it here anyway)
Prague
Italy
Pisa, Tuscany, Cinque Terre
Sicily
Florence, Rome, Venice
Greece
Istanbul
Munich
Madrid [Updated: removed due to popular demand]
Sevilla, Valencia
Palermo
Croatia coast
Bordeaux, Marseille, nice (lower priority)
Amsterdam
palma

UK
Edinburgh
Lake District
Scottish highlands
Cambridge
Windsor Castle
Belfast
Cork
Wales
Brighton

Work related:
Berlin
Bern

New Adventures [Updated Nov 28 per Expat Em]
South Africa
Morrocco

These are exciting because there is a 3% chance of loss-of-life.

So what does that mean?
If you are planning on visiting the Secret Den of the Ninja, let me know if you’re interested in joining one of those trips. If you’re not visiting, I’ll take you along with me via this blog (sans the defining moments where I pass out on the street). If you think I should ex-nay a city or I should hit another, please leave it in the comments. I will read it and let you know whether I will entertain it, or just rub camel fecal matter on your face.

For Thanksgiving, because I’m not in the United States, I went to lunch at the Old Ship with some coworkers. It is a very traditional pub, full of ales and beer and old British dudes that take down pints for lunch.

What I ordered was:
Steak, mushroom, onion sandwich: 5.50
Chips: 2.50

Total price: £8.

Pretty pricey lunch in the US for that price. You would expect a decent sandwich. A good half hour later, I received my lunch. Now, I’m not expecting lightly seared kobe beef on top of mango chutney but what I got was:
1. white bread (3 pieces in a club sandwich way)
2. lettuce
3. tomato
4. cucumber
5. chopped up steak – no seasoning

I was pleasantly surprised, actually. That is, surprised that the food even arrived at all. And surprised the chopped up steak resembled any edible kind of substance at all. The good thing is that the sandwich fixings (lettuce, tomato, cucumber) was duplicated next to the sandwich to be the “salad”. GhettoFab. The sandwich was under a section called “Hot Fill”. I recommended they rename it to “Crap Fill”.(yeah, I came up with that all on my own)

May this be a lesson to those who think they can eat at any pub and get good “pub grub”. Traditional British food is crap any way you cut it…consider yourself warned if you’re in London.