NeilConner.co.uk

CN Tower, Toronto

The 5th January 20Eleven will go down as a good day. Spent the day in Toronto City and loved it. Such a nice place. Parked underneath the Rogers Centre which is the home to the Toronto Blue Jays. Literally as we walked out the parking, up some stairs… BOOM! That thing (picture) was directly above us. Amazing. “The worlds tallest comma tower”. Typical for a geek like myself to note that haha.
After a few pictures from the bottom, we had to go to the top. The lift was stuck to the side so you can look outside the whole way up. Didn’t make me feel a little but ill at all :/ it’s quite a way up. So now you’re inside the tower and the top… The view is unreal. We picked a pretty good day too. Sun was shining and the pics I took came out well. They’ll be on here soon enough, I’ll post on here when they are live. Got to go… Skype Date lol.

So things over here really perked up with the decent from the tower into the gift shop. Had to get me a tee, only chance I’ll get to go so why not. We then went for a walk through the city. We pretty much headed towards the Eaton Centre. This place is a little on the big side. It has like over 300 shops and an Apple Store. Win. Grabbed a ThaiExpress fast food lunch. Was pretty impressive, I can’t see why we don’t have Thai places like that in the UK, minus Camden Market. Hmmmm. Dragons Den? Lol
I got me a Toronto Raptors goodie for 60 Bucks. They are Toronto’s Basketball team. I was tempted to get a Canada Ice Hockey Jersy but for 140 Dollars, I’ll pass. How can they justify that? Man Utd is the most watched team in any sport and you can get their shirt for like £50. Double-you Tee Eff???

I have been wearing my Deadmau5 hoodie most days since I’ve been here. I got stopped a few times yesterday by people asking me about it. One of them was a security guard who wanted to get his own one but “can’t get hold of them anywhere”. He blatantly needs to learn how to use the Internet, such a clever security guard. “Hey did you pay for that 45inch LCD TV?” “Nah mate, it’s free” “OK, crack on son”. NoOb.
I was quietly hoping to bump into the Mau5 on my travels but I doubt it. However, if you do read this Joel, Happy Birthday for the other day and you need to get some more merchandise for your online store as I have got nearly all of it and also you need to sell it locally. A Mau5 5hop in Toronto would be ace. I’d come back for it.

So the pre-booked Skype session was really nice, well needed. Thank you to the other participant. Also a thank you to the KIK App and the team behind it. This thing has been amazing and I’ll be using it alot on my next tour. Such a good idea, especially in times like these ^_^ thanks again.

So today has been mega chilled out. Got one more level to do on Banjo-Kazooie but Brooke now has Black Ops. So I have taken the role of personal trainer and showing her the ropes. Which means I get a fix too. Shame it is on PS3 and not XBOX. NUKETOWN!!! I better play this one.

In a bit.
Conn. ^_^

Canadian Junior Hockey Team

I’m not an angry person. I only rant on here, so I can get my negativity out in a way that doesn’t have me shouting and raving in peoples faces. I am actually pretty chilled TBF. Thought I’d just say that before I get a rep of being a serial angry bastard lol. So anyway, I missed a big rant today. I actually had a verbal rant, out loud, walking down the ‘roadway’ ‘downtown’. Just went off on one. It’s rare that I do get angry but I lost it earlier haha. It was an amazing rant and would sit happily amongst these pages. But I missed it. A missed opportunity indeed. I could try and remember it but it’ll be all over the place and the last time I did that – the rant got me in a little bother.
So I wish I had a permanent voice record facility that I could track back to. And for the smart people, yes I have it on my phone but I can’t glue that to my face and leave it running can I? Lol.

So I got me some ciders and a ma-hoo-sive bottle of JD to make life more interesting in the evenings. I am enjoying some Strongbow right now, it’s going down well. Having a bit of a daydream about home for a second then… Remembering who told me that this trip is a good way to get some blogging done. Cheers Hun.

I loved waking up to a few inches of snow this morning. There has been none since I got here, then suddenly – BOOM! Like. A nice little touch. Brrrrrrrrr. Hopefully more tomorrow, just keep piling it up please. Talking about tomorrow, it’s the Junior Hockey Championship Final. Canada Vs Russia. I really enjoyed the game last night and will be heading to the pub tomorrow to watch it. Ice Hockey is next to not watched in the UK but I’ll be watching more of it for sure. Canada stuffed Russia 6-3 in the earlier stages and should easily win the ‘Gold Medal Game’.

I have not long got back from watching a friends’ Basketball practice at a local school. It made me realise a few things… First, I suck at Basketball. These girls are all like 12/13 and they were amazing. They were just a local team and vary from two thirds my height to half of it. They were sinking shots from all over the place and would run rings around me and Wills if we gave them a game. Fair play. Other things I realised is that, as a country we have very little effort to give sport. At most a lad might play a game of footy on a sunday morning and a midweek evening training session. These girls train on 4/5 weekday evenings and a Saturday game or training session. Double-you Tee Eff? Good effort. Not only that, the sessions are like 2 hours long aaaand they have homework to do. Series of shots to complete, physical training to do and they happily go for runs in the afternoon… IN THE FUCKING SNOW. That is some military shit right there. I was guilty as a kid to not do much sport but I was always out and about. I never see kids playing footy in the street or down the park, maybe once in a blue moon.
The queen’s speech just gone was primarily focused on sport. I guess the promotion of London 2012 was on her mind but it makes sense. There should be more of a push for people, especially kids to do more sport. Hmmm.

So that covers it for now. I’ll prob add something later, actually I won’t. That was a long blog. Is that too long? A good length? IDK.

In a bit.
Conn. ^_^

Distance

Get me out of here. That picture sums up my depression right now. I shouldn’t moan about where I am. I am lucky to be here in some respect. Not everyone from back home gets to go to Canada for New Years, but I’d happily swap with them like… NOW. Nothing bad has happened, nobody has made me want to leave. I just don’t want to be here. End of. I am sick of being used as an escape goat for when things get awkward or annoying. I am not something you can just show off. Yes I have an ‘interesting’ job and I’ve met David Beckham… But big fucking deal. Please stop telling every person that you see about what I do, they don’t care. Eff Eff Ess.

Fucking phone!! Just lost all that I typed. Grrr. Fuck it.

So had a pretty chilled evening down the local bar. Stereotyped hangout for the hockey lovers of Canada, guys with mullets and pantera tees tucked into their jeans, women propping up the bar because their ex died in ‘naam and the mullet guys missus who is way to cute for him but comes complete with her own pool cue. Laugh Out Loud.
The language barrier was very much cemented tonight. Brick One – Alright mate, haa’s it gaa’n?… Pardon me?… Hello my friend, how are you today? – There we go, got there in the end you dick. Brick Two – Couple Heinekens please babe… Sorry?… Can I have Twoooo Heinekens pleeeease?? Hahaha. It’s like Brits in France or something, it’s their country but we’ll make them speak fucking English. If they don’t understand what you are saying just saying louder and slower. LMFAO.
The tables flipped when I got to the pool table. Fuck sake. Crouched down to see what coins I needed and the sticker above the coin tray said ‘Loonies Only’. The fuck is a Loony?? I learned that it was a Dollar coin. Drama over, I’m now playing pool. Imagine the opposite to that in the UK… Canadian goes into a local pub, dodges a few fists, gets laughed at a bit, cries in the corner for a big longer then makes it to the pool table. Said Canadian crouches down to see – ‘Squids Only’ or ‘One Golden Nugget’. He’s going to end up doing one if two things – pull out a fishing rod and head to the coastline, get a boat and then end up god knows where or jumps into his rusty DMC and heads to McDonalds.

I did really get into the US Vs Canada – International Junior Hockey Championships Semi Final 2. Canada were all over them and won 4-1. Football!!! Hockey!!!

So, the trip to the ‘mall’ was pretty lame. I did, however, get an Angry Birds case for my iPhone 4. Choices included the Standard Red Bird, the Fast Yellow Bird or an Enemy Green Pig. Who would want the enemy? No Sale. Yellow Bird for me at the bargain price of $34.99. Double-you Tee Eff????

Onwards. I have had a few to drink and will look to get an early night for once. Gets England here sooner eh?

Laters.
Conn. ^_^

Niagara Falls (Canada Side)

Today has made me realise why I didn’t really want to come to Canada. I can’t actually achieve the things I wanted to do whilst I am here. I wanted to ski… The place is flatter than the pancakes I have been eating. I wanted to go to New York… I am miles away from it, I knew it was far, but fuck me!! To add to the depression, Niagara Falls is really nothing special. I must admit, I saw it and was like WOW! But then you park the car and walk over to it all and then… Oh. Realisation that they are actually not that big, it’s freezing cold and you can only look at falling water for about 2-3 minutes, until you want to go and look around the poor excuse of a town and live it up a bit. :/

Another dull point, is you can see America. It’s literally a long stone throw away and you can’t go. Unless you can either be bothered to queue in traffic or be frisked and quizzed to death for your reasons for crossing a fuckin river. Yank is Wank. Oh well, we move on. Today ticked a life box, yes I have seen them but the illusion of what I thought they were going to be like was shattered. Google Images will present more of a nice feast for your eyes, plus you’ll be in the comfort of your own bed/home/office. But I will add a photo I took today as my post pic, it keeps things different. It’s not like in 3 weeks time when I am struggling to find something new to display and I start to think about adventures past.

To get the pic up there was quite fun. My iPad won’t charge off of the Canadian power sockets so I can’t use it now – Cock. So I had to find an alternative to getting pics uploaded via FTP etc. without buying yet another FTP related app for the iPhone. So I got a simple pic uploader app called PhotoUpLink. Search for it, tidy. This app literally sends a pic to an FTP folder of your choosing and that’s about it, or a Facebook Photo Album. Done. Prior to using this app I have to reduce the pic size, as iPhone 4 HDR makes them quite large. To do this I use – PicResize. Very simple, select pixel width etc and keep ratio… BOOM, save to iPhone Photo Album. Deal. So the pic is up but I like to get my files in a file naming convention. E.g. 20110103niagara.jpg is this one. So I need a free FTP client that will allow me to make that possible. Send in Net2FTP. This site will allow that. So a quick GUI allows access to the server, then a tickbox on the recently uploaded file and a drop down option of ‘Rename’. Job is a good’n. So that is it. Now it’s just using the provided client access on my hosting to view my file manager and we are blogging. FTW.

It shows how I feel about the whole Niagara thing, if I can get more excited and write more about blogging on an iPhone than around about a world famous cold shower. Hmmmm. The last 24 hours has been a bit mixed up. I’ve been having some funny/interesting chats with back home for some of it and then a bit of a downer when I hear how peeps are really getting on. Not well. The only thing that is good about this is, they are happy to talk to me about it. This person means a stupid amount to me, and I hate seeing them upset. Even more so now…
I am very close to getting my flight changed and flying back sooner. I just dont’t feel like I am going to achieve anything here and I can be more proactive back in the UK. I also really need to see someone and have a chat. Things have stepped up a gear and now I am keen to learn more. It feels quite nice to get the feeling again… it has been quite a while. You know the one… Sick stomach twist when your phone vibrates in your pocket or, you realise they have commented on your status and you are waiting in anticipation as the painfully slow load reveals what they have said. I love it, it’s like being at school. Exciting times…

Well I should really get to bed, I have a ‘Mall’ to roam about tomorrow and I want to be relatively alive to do it. Splash a bit of cash and load up the suitcase with gifts, toys and random gash you know people will throw out come next weekend.

Night.
Conn. ^_^

Banjo-Kazooie

So, it is a new year… 20Eleven… I hope it is a good one. It was entered on a high. I had some interesting messages a few hours before the clock hit 12. Those KIK messages made my night. They also made my year end on a high but overall they made me want to get the next flight back to the UK. FFS I have waited for that moment for a couple years, then BOOM! Stomach is doing backflips at the thought. Hence post 5.1 – I just hope this works out… at whatever pace it needs to be. I can wait.

Other than that, not alot is going on here. Was a nice long morning in bed. More sleep required for sure but I’ll make up for that tonight probably, oh wait it is nearly 0100 again haha. That is because I stumbled across an old friend. An N64. Not only that, it was hiding with Mario Kart, Zelda and the most important… Banjo-Kazooie. 4 hours later and here I am, still awake but having a quick blog. Not much ranting needed just now, I’m in too much of a good mood. ^_^

So I’ll write a proper blog tomorrow, providing I can charge the iPad and get a good bit of time to do so… the best bit about it is that it’ll be about what I’m doing tomorrow(/today lol)… and that is… I’m off to Niagra Falls. FTMFW. I can’t wait to check-in on FB when I’m there haha.

Laters.
Conn. ^_^