While My Ukulele Gently Weeps

About 6 months back I got the bright idea of purchasing a Ukulele... 

...And like all my past musical endevours I've picked up said Uke twice, maybe trice since then. While unboxing some of my stuff this evening (yes, I still haven't unboxed a lot of my stuff since the move) I came across my little Uke. Inspired by my find I started strumming out a few chords and decided to youtube some Ukulele videos and came across this fantastic rendition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

So off I went and learnt off (very badly) the first few bars of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Feeling very chuffed with myself I went back to youtube to see how my endevours faired against other Uke players on youtube land. Then I came across this little guy (bare in mind he's only 5 years old)...

...I subsequently retired the Uke back to the box in which I found it.

Halloween 3 : The Jedi Strike Back

I'm a little late this year on the Halloween post but considering I've been internet deficient for the last couple of weeks I'm sure you can understand the lateness.

If you've been following this blog for the last 2 years you will know that since landing in North America I discovered the great North American past-time of pumpkin carving. Thus began my Halloween pumpkin carving adventures.

You can find my last 2 forays into pumpkin carving madness here (my 1st pumpkin carving) and here (my pumpkin carving from last year).

Having 2 years of pumpkin carving experience behind me, this year I got a little bit more ambitious. First off, gone are the crappy plastic carving tools. This year I got a set of professional carving tools (see below) from my lady friend and attended my first pumpkin carving party in Sacramento as a wee stop over on my way to my new home in L.A..

So without further ado, behold this years pumpkin massacre. Mwuhahaha.....

This years crop of pumpkins offered up for sacrifice

My brand new implements of destruction (and yes that's an electric carving drill you see; used for doing carves that don't go all the way through the pumpkin)

With professional tools available to me this year I needed to find a pattern worthy of what the tools could do (I felt that the force was strong in this one)

Transferring the pattern to the pumpkin

After the tools had done their magic

Lighting up the pumpkin

Yoda goes to the dark side (a bit blurry)

OK, this year it looks like I may have bit off a bit more than I could chew. I could blame the pumpkin for being thicker than the average year or I didn't have as much time to perfect the carving since I was massacring it at a party but the truth is, I was just over confident.  When it comes to pumpkin carving, I'm still a Padawan.

For completeness, here's a pic of some of the other pumpkins at the pumpkin carving party...

And yet again, we survive another pumpkin madness massacre for another year...

Back To Digital Civilisation

I have internet again! It took a few weeks and it looked like it was going to take a few more weeks but thanks to my girlfriend's persistent hounding with the internet company we got the installation date bumped. :D

It  feels nice to have information at your finger tips again. To be honest, I felt a little lost without having the power of the internet at hand whenever I needed it. When did I become so dependant on technology? 

So, as promised in my previous post. Behold my new wheels that will help me get around L.A. until such time as I can afford a car and get a proper US driver's license...

On a related note, I experienced the famous L.A. freeways and L.A. traffic for the first time this weekend. To say that it was a stressful experience is a bit of an understatement... and I was only the passenger! Not looking forward to the day when I finally have to drive those freeways myself.

Oh public transport how I miss thee

As I'm sitting here in Starbucks with internet access available to me I figured that I should take advantage of this and do a quick post update.

So, I've moved again. Goodbye Vancouver and goodbye Canada. I've now moved my ass State side down to L.A. (well more precisely, Glendale). I've been here a week so far and although most of it has been spent in my new job I can safely say Glendale (and by association L.A.) is definitely not a town made for the weary walker among us. 

Having just landed and not having any mode of transport I've been forced to use either the so called public transportation or my legs to get to places. So far I've taken to walking to everywhere as the buses here seem very very infrequent. On my 40/50 minute walk to work every morning the so called bus has not yet, ever pass me once. All the bus stops I pass are usually always empty. Coming from living in Dublin all my life and recently coming from Vancouver where the public transportation was very good, at 8/8:30am in the morning you would always see the bus stops chocker block with people waiting to catch the bus to work. Thus, it is just so unusual for me to see bus stops empty in the wee hours of the morning (not to mention the sidewalks).

What is even more frustrating is that as you're happily walking along you suddenly find that the damn footpath has just decided to disappear from you for no apparent reason at all and now you're forced to walk on the thin curb as traffic is whizzing pass you with the driver's all wondering "who is this fool attempting to walk everywhere?".

So, yesterday, I decided to buy myself a bike as a stop gap to having some proper wheels of some sort (I'll post a picture of my new baby on my next update). After walking around for close to 3 hours to/from and between the two bike shops (of one of which was just a crappy shack with next to nothing in it) I found on the internet within "walking distance" to where I live,  it felt great to be able to cycle home on my shiny new toy at the end of the day.

Now I've to save up for a car of some sort if I'm to be upwardly mobile in L.A. Too poor at the moment and got a very empty apartment to furnish first. So it looks like I'll be holding out till sometime after winter before I can afford a set of motorised wheels. Until then I'll just have to rely on my new bike, my legs and "public transport" *cough* *cough*.