Whiskey on the Rocks

Well it's been a little while since I posted something, and since it had been quite a while since I'd been this bloody cold I had an opening link with which to begin a blog post. Brilliant I know, save the praises of worship for later. I arrived in Boston Massachusetts yesterday evening into a chilly -4 degrees Celsius.

There is ice all over the place and hence came the title, Whiskey... on the Rocks. Poetic, priceless, whatever you want to call it. Fact is there is enough Ice here to make that many whiskeys that we would be properly smaYshed!

The trip over was interesting for two reasons. The first being the fact that a colleague posted an interesting article on our Company Blog discussing the crashing of in flight entertainment systems. Having read this shortly before embarking on an intercontinental flight I couldn't help but get itchy fingers.

I tried unsuccessfully on the first leg to crash KLM's system however no luck, rock solid, tested by quality people I thought. I had thus given up hope on crashing one of these systems while waiting for five hours at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport over a quick game of Roulette in the airport casino.

Upon boarding the next flight, operated by Northwest Airlines, my hope was restored. Shortly after takeoff they announced that they would be rebooting the system shortly as it was malfunctioning. All the screens went blank, a very Linux looking penguin appeared on my screen and some very Linux looking commands scrolled across the monitor. This process was repeated no less than six times during the flight as the system kept crashing. I was thankful for my Pod, which kept me entertained, and provided an excuse so as to not discuss the state of the American youth with the rather large polish gentleman seated next to me.

I'm not sure if someone else on the flight had read the article and was trying their hardest to ensure no one saw anything on the in flight system, or if it was just particularly unstable, but I had never seen anything like it.

I guess that's coincidence for you, anyway a couple of pics from a sunny but bloody freezing Boston Massachusetts... Whiskey Out



Working Quarters




















The building I go to work in across the road from my hotel.



The Boston Public Library

There seems to be a trend here...

So I went on a bit of a mission Friday night...

It all started at the office with a little award ceremony. I picked up three awards... one up from the previous year. This generally speaking is a good thing, except when the award is for doing something rather random or really out there. For example, the Borat lookalike award... I did not win that but you get the idea... what where the prizes... multiple shots of some form of an alcoholic drink. Since the awards ceremony started at 5pm and ended by 7pm we were all quite in the mood as one would expect! hence the remainder of the evening was very interesting...

After the award ceremony we (Whiskey and most of the company) all went to Panchos, a lovely little place, for a "few" goodbye drinks for one of our former colleagues. This started out rather calm with a few frozen margaritas and general banter with the bar tender of which was keen to show us all... let your imagination run wild for a moment... a magic trick...

As friends started arriving we upgraded from glasses of frozen margaritas to 2l jugs... ooh that stuff... gets you way too excited! I took around 30 photos in 5mins during dinner... bloody tequila! Whiskey was on form as well, having Tequila shots etc. Unfortunately Soda did not make it to Panchos but was just down the road with his girlfriend and there crowed... I am not too sure what happened there but I hope it was a good one Soda!

Once we were all thoroughly inebriated the next step was to goto the local pool club just down the road, which is where we found Soda and his entourage but myself with a few others decided it would be best to go to the primary... TigerTiger...

At this point Whiskey makes the wise decision of going back to The Tavern so as to ensure he is at least sort of capable of cycling the next morning. Do not worry, he will not get away with fading! WHEN DO YOU NOT GO DJINKING?!

At this point the remainder of the group are extremely sober, and fully aware of what we are doing... So we walk into TigerTiger strutting our stuff since we are all that. We do not go for the usual one beer before doing anything too dangerous... no... we are beyond that, we have transcended all... we go straight to old faithful... the shooter bar and the oh so godly shooter button!

I am not too sure what the numbers where but I know we had way too many shooters... a little bit of Tequila, a little bit of Jager as well as a little bit of this and a little bit of that... memory fading...

next memory...

Aahh! the dance floor! I recall being absolutely confident in my dancing abilities... too my detriment I am sure. Whilst dancing the night away with this lovely girl I decide to get all cocky and end up against the wall... do not get too excited ladies and gentleman, I merely strained my leg while performing a dance move only a professional ballerina or dancer could ever have hoped to pull off. None the less I was injured and was looked after by the lovely lady.

next memory...

um... ah yes... I think I must have started to drink less as I started on the dance floor due the fact that the surroundings were getting clearer... one of the revelations I had along with the remainder of the entourage is that it was 04:30 Saturday morning... hmm maybe it is time to go home... maybe...

We end up at the local 24Hour restaurant just down the road. Reason being after the amount of alcohol we had just drank, we need to get some food in our system... The only real issue with this lovely 24Hour restaurant is that the burger patty tasted bloody awful... a likeness to a diseased rat... not that I would know what that tastes like mind you but I would bet not very nice!

Once we had consumed the frozen chips and rat meat one of the entourage had a small revelation... it is dawn... best we get to bed...


Wine
"Life is too short to drink cheap wine"