I try to get out for a ‘big’ trip every Mayday and Hallowe’en, pull Christmas at home and … well that usually eats all my time. This year, I had the idea to sit still for the summer and see… then offers impossible to refuse seem to sprout like weeds in my inbox and all of a sudden things like ‘a normal sunday at home’ become unusual times. This is far from a problem, I’m just shocked at how my year suddenly snapped into focus in the past month. This is that effect of ‘time passing more quickly as you get older’ right? I guess like sliding down an inverse parabola, its a barely noticeable slope… then all of a sudden you’re staring straight down and the bottom is flying up to you.

I’ve taken on an ambitious project, one that I’m not quite sure I’m up to – scepticism has been expressed – but I think its worth trying; the worst consequence of failure is just the lost time, success could be glorious… Fortune Favours the Bold and all that. I realise now that the culture shock of the past half year had knocked me into a defensive crouch and I need to shake that off and just get moving again – because to do nothing is to just let the time fall though my fingers – ending up in the same place as to try and fail but without the chance of success.

Let me take a moment to apologise for the inherent cryptic… rambly… nature of all this. Speak ye not aloud on the internets and all that but my point from all this is:
1. decision trees – they’re a great tool to sort out things :)
2. keeping a fairly detailed six/eight month look ahead has saved my bacon repeatedly in the past, I recommend it.

The flat is pretty ritzy. Views aren’t great but I don’t care. If I’m sitting on my terrace its because I’m reading the papers, so whatevers behind the papers isn’t important. I’ve inherited five planters filled with dead soil, I should stick some ferns or something in them but I’m not there yet. I had lots of fun trying to figure out why half my plugs didn’t work and half my wall switches did nothing (because the wall switches turn on the plugs across the room) but I got there in the end and bought floor standing lamps to be the ‘room lights’ for the study/guestroom. The rest of the people in the block are mostly little old ladies or women of a certain age so the under floor heating (centrally controlled) is set to furnace. I tend to come home and throw open the windows to purge the heat to a merely ‘stifling’ level.

Work has started to indoctrinate colleagues to cookies.

Guest capacity has been arranged; primary is study with fold out bed, lights and other reasonable comforts like curtains. Secondary is the living room. Where the couch folds out to a bed but there are as yet no curtains and the building across the road is a school. I’m getting fed up of people looking at me if I want to have my lunch on my terrace on a weekend; its a weekend; I’m fully dressed, its my balcony, y’all can fuck off. However, if you want to come visit and feel a compulsion to sleep in the nip; please let me know so steps can be taken.

The work is good, I was trying to think earlier about what I could be doing that would be better and honestly apart from doing exactly the same with a more awesome and sexy team, I can’t think of something; its very cool and interesting and the team is great but that they’re all up to their necks in kids so not much happening after hours.

It is the one thing I’m missing about PHC, the camaraderie and the age bracket of the peer group – there they were peers, here they’re a few years older and firmly on the ‘plus kids’ path. I guess its only to be expected, anyone who doesn’t have dependants has been packed off to somewhere grim. Life in the Village down south – everyone living with two minutes of each other – was also cool; genuine old school community. I can see how it’ll be like that here though once I get a grip on the language. Already I can recognise half the people on the bus in the morning, the staff at my local know my name, I run into people I know on the streets even though I know all of a half dozen people here. The French are somewhat like cats in this respect, they’re not very good with strangers but you just have to let them get used to you being there in the background and then they’re fine. Cats are an excellent reference for many things in fact. Hmm, there may be a lucrative self help book in there somewhere…

To conclude; have extricate myself from down south, Savage won the deadpool and am now ensconced in the land of fine wines and cheeses. Skiiing and Scuba are on the to do list after learning the lingo. Life is not to bad at all here.

Sure, if you’re not with La famiglia you’re unlikely to just be passing though – but Biarritz is just an hour up the road, Ryanair flies there too.

“I know someones happy with what I’ve been doing – but not who – and thus not what it is that is pleasing nor what I should be doing more of.”

I agree – most of my family back two generations went to the US – by the numbers, I’m actually one of the tiny Irish offshoot of a large American family. They weren’t imagining they would be coming back much or ever unless they prospered on arrival. Are we too squeamish these days? Wasn’t too long ago that things were considered worth the price of human lives – are only wars worth it now? Where are the rocket ship test pilots, for instance.

Would you take a one way ticket to Mars as a colony pioneer?

My point? It means that I shall be coming home on vacation shortly – London 24th- Xth*, Dublin Xth to 29th, Paris 29th – 1st, Houston TX 1st – Yth**, Los Angeles from Y+1 – 10th.

Important dates: 28th; 1930 onwards at the Bull and Castle, Dublin – y’all come.

* X is yet to be determined, probably the 26th, but I might push it another day if theres good reason.
** Y is dependant on the Houston Posse, there were mutterings of plans and Austin, so whenever thats all done I’m going to get on a train and 36 hours later I should be in LA.

Instead, you can have a written account.

The convention this year had several surreal elements to it. The first one was the Friday night was better attended than before. I have to say that I was impressed with the numbers. People came down and played in the LARP, and we were introduced to the fact that Doom had taken the lead of a platoon of L5R-playing Germans, who he led through the con and straight into the Sudetenland.

The LARPs seemed to run fairly consistently well. I heard good things about the Fan & Sabre, including the fact that the whole LARP were dancing in a courtly fashion, which must have been quite the scene.

We had at least 4 tables for tabletops for each event. There is a definite correlation between having BRO as your RPG dude and good RPG attendance. It’s been shown at Gaelcon and Leprecon now. A Kudo each to him & Siskington.

The Guest for the Con was Richard Borg, creator of Memoir ’44. I have to say, Richard proved a superlative guest. He added a friendly, avuncular quality. Richard was very eager and joined in games, told interesting stories, and even spent some time playing with the two baby con attendees this year. I had the honour of victory over him in the inaugural Battle of Hoth, under Rebel Alliance General Honan’s direction. The real heroes of Hoth were Princess Organa, and her unit composed of elements from the Echo Base Reserve Fizz Band, Woodwind section. Led by Senator Organa, the Bith managed not only to inflict critical damage to an AT-At, but drive the 20 metre tall walker back across the open, snowy battlefield. Though none of the Bith survived a second engagement with the Imperial Walker, another unit under my command delivered the killer blow after Gorman made me re-roll my victorious grenade result.

2009 will live as a year of infamy for another reason. This year, Le Mysterieux Table Cinq de Monté Cristo was defeated by Sample Number Nine. I am still in considerable shock, but suffice to say that we will be back next year, with a fully armed and armoured battle station.

The staff and committee this year were awesome. The Con went off with surprising ease, and all the good numbers (attendees, kotei, players at games) were up. We even had free pizza from Just-Eat, which rocked.

The closing ceremony was fun. Noodle instigated Order 66, which left the committee a smoking ruin of nerf-clustered corpses. We also had a short slide show to remember icecream by. I will leave that below for your perusal.

Closing

This weekend at GenCon, no fewer than seven people gave me the now instantly recognizable wide-eyed look and said, “You look so familiar,” including one man dressed impressively in a feathered hat and full-length cloak who was too busy looking impressive to stop walking and talk to me beyond that sentence. I didn’t expect any of those people to actually know me.

The jaw-dropping moment of truth happened Saturday morning as I was waiting outside my hotel to either be picked up by the airport shuttle (transportation was complicated) or split a cab fare with a fellow gamer who was also waiting outside. A couple exited the hotel and looked at us. They offered us both a lift, as they’d rented a car, and we headed to the parking lot. On the way, the question came up and I launched into my stock answer involving genetics and blank features. “Unless you gamed in DC…or live in LA…” I ended, trailing off.

“Yeah, I live in LA.”

“Really? What part?”

The conversation spiralled this way until we determined that this stranger works in my building, one floor upstairs from me. Indeed, I looked familiar because he’d seen me in stairwells and at the adjacent coffee shop. The other passenger listened with the quiet amazement only possible when you’re up too early to create a more verbose response to astonishing phenomena. Not only did this person work upstairs from me, but he plays D&D (probably 4th ed.) and is looking to add another person or two to the game.

This neatly solves the question of how I will get my gaming fix between now and when I graduate, which is increasingly likely to happen in March.

The one very important point to keep in mind is that the metro system is *incredibly* hot – the carriages are air-conditioned and dump heat into badly ventilated tunnels. Even if the carriages are ok, the platforms are like an oven in the smaller stations and uncomfortable. If you can arrange your trip to just use the main stations (Grand central, Penn, Union Square etc.) you’ll be more comfortable.

I stayed in the Pod Hotel 230 E 51st Street which I found fantastic – the rooms are not big, but clean, comfortable and very central. I liked it a lot and it was good value. Here are reviews for other points of view. The Pod Hotel New York (230 E 51st Street, (212) 355-0300)

Right next door there is a delicious sushi-sashimi place (Tanaka’s, 222 E 51st St) but you may not want to come to America and eat Japanese…

Icons – you have to see the Chrysler Building and the Statue of Liberty. The Chrysler building is the best-looking of the Art Deco skyscrapers, better than the Empire State building. The Statue of Liberty is just the symbol of everything that’s great about the US. There is also a beach/themepark/aquarium out at Coney Island (just take the D, F trains out to the end) – its a fantastic beach, almost empty in case you want to be able to say you went swimming in New York :)

Museums – I would recommend the Natural History Museum on the West side of Central Park for a great collection of dionsaurs and other critters, then take a nice stroll through Central park to the Metropolitan museum on the East side. Highlights of the Met museum are the reassembled Egyptian Temple and the fantastic Roman relics.

Coffee shops – I went looking for the best coffee places in New York and according to the internet they are apparently:
Abraço – 86 East 7th Street,
Gimme Coffee – 228 Mott St
Ninth Street Espresso – 700 E 9th St

These are indeed good – I would recommend taking Abraco and Ninth St. Expresso as part of days shopping around the East village – it is definitely where I saw all the little fashion shops – between 5th Ave and Avenue A – and then down into the Lower East Side. There is one big vintage place called Screaming Mimi’s (382 Lafayette Street) that had lots of stuff. For other cafe’s and the like – “Bon Pain” is a good chain and there are a few of them.

So – a day for the museums, a day shopping in the East Village/Lower East Side, I went to Coney Island one day and spent another just walking around mid-town along Broadway – if you have more time, I am sure you will come up with other creative things to do.

Bars and Clubs, alas, I am less use because my cousin brought me around and apart from ‘there is a good bar somewhere around 23rd Street, 3rd Avenue’ I can’t remember any detail. Anyone care to add to this?

I will definitely be at The Dead Flags Single Launch in the day time – and my major head-ache now is whether or not to take up an invitation to The Tassel Club (perhaps NSFW?) that evening… it looks like great fun… but will *not* be in keeping with ‘being around, drinks for to be had with’.

Sunday is the transportation to Waterford for Monday, the wedding, trip for the reason of.

Time I do not have much of. (26 days to departure)