At 1/22/09 04:02 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote:

At 1/22/09 03:17 PM, EviLDoG wrote: Lovely place though, i imagine it will still be expensive though.

Canterbury's a big student town (2 Uni's) so it's really quite cheap, compared to London anyway. About £1.90-£2.60 a pint.

Yeah, i know the drinks cheap (Mum and dad have a place roughly 20 miles away in ramsgate) just werent sure about the lodgings.

At 1/22/09 04:04 PM, EviLDoG wrote:

At 1/22/09 04:02 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote:

At 1/22/09 03:17 PM, EviLDoG wrote: Lovely place though, i imagine it will still be expensive though.

Canterbury's a big student town (2 Uni's) so it's really quite cheap, compared to London anyway. About £1.90-£2.60 a pint.

Yeah, i know the drinks cheap (Mum and dad have a place roughly 20 miles away in ramsgate) just werent sure about the lodgings.

Any student town will be good and cheap :) Cardiff, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Oxford. The thing with somewhere as massive as London is - it's London. They can charge what they like and they often do.

I wish I could have been there, you'll all see me in 2011 though.

At 1/22/09 04:16 PM, Luis wrote: Maybe we could do Birmingham this year just to try it out.

Travelodge £19 per room per night

If you start kissing after downing eight pints you are not gay, you are just drunk...

More pornography.

At 1/22/09 04:02 PM, Kirk-Cocaine wrote: Canterbury's a big student town (2 Uni's) so it's really quite cheap, compared to London anyway. About £1.90-£2.60 a pint.

Leeds is too, Leeds Uni with 80000+ students, Leeds Met with ~35000 plus all the higher education places (colleges but some offer degrees too like Leeds Trinity, Leeds College of Music, etc). Leeds Trinity is applying to become an independent University so maybe we'll have 3, oh yay. We were voted the best University destination. Plus we have one of the best night lifes in Britain like I said but that's mainly the chav music scene (Danny Bond, Tom Zanetti.. shit).

Pints are about £1.50-£2.50 generally, not too bad.

Leeds was recently voted the "Best City to Visit Outside London" and other awards that mean very little such as "Visitors City of the Year", "Britains Favourite City" etc. I'm sure a lot of other cities have won these awards at various years but just saying (wikipedia ftw).

I know I already said stuff about Leeds but this page was full of Birmingham love so I needed to fight back a bit :D

No matter where you go I'll come - just keep in mind Leeds Festival (same festival as Reading, Leeds is the 2nd venue) is going on so time it before or after (I think after is fine but some people might have school I don't know) that.

At 1/22/09 12:10 PM, barbiegoesbad wrote: I also have a video of Tom break dancing haha, if anyone could upload that (or maybe I will just put it on youtube).

1) That picture is hot on so many levels

2) Tom break dancing is awesome. Links please!

At 1/22/09 12:24 PM, EviLDoG wrote: I would pick the swain, cause he had a heavenly voice that would just send you to sleep after the painful arse sex.

I had a conversation with him about the Mastermind while we were outside the London Eye and we were both discussing plans to take over London from out mighty vantage point, that is the London Eye. Little did they suspect that almost 10 years ago, they were building a base that one day would lead to the conquering of London *muahahahahaha!*

At 1/22/09 02:04 PM, Luis wrote: Might be a smaller group but who cares... two years ago London was only like 12 people.

Something says to me that it will never be as small again :P

At 1/22/09 02:07 PM, TheHappySheep wrote: I think Manchester should be in consideration. Oh and I fucking hate leeds.

And I fucking hate the idea of going to meet friends and getting stabbed.

At 1/22/09 02:14 PM, ChromeShark wrote: Can't think of anywhere here as good as Namco for the main meet in the day, there's an arcade but its a lot smaller (not sure if its even open any more).

There's the bowling place in Fiveways - it's probably got some video games and pool as well. Plus if it's anything like the one in Worcester, they will do food, so we're pretty much covered ;)

At 1/22/09 03:23 PM, Mogly wrote:

At 1/22/09 03:13 PM, AsthmaticHamster wrote: So my question will sound quite harsh, but are either Leeds or Birmingham worth crossing the ocean for?

Yeah Birmingham is pretty good, don't know about Leeds. Birmingham is Englands 'second city' and rightfully should be the capital because of it's positioning. I don't know what there is to do there other than go to a Villa game haha, thats all I go to Birmingham for.

You're a Villa fan? Wow, there are some of us outside of the Midlands :P

Luis what picture are you talking about? Got a link?

Back a page - Luis, Swain and barbiegoesbad, I think it was...

At 1/22/09 05:18 PM, Andersson wrote: If you start kissing after downing eight pints you are not gay, you are just drunk...

Mogly, were you wondering whose hand was crawling up your right leg then?

At 1/22/09 08:59 AM, liaaaam wrote:

At 1/21/09 02:54 PM, Luis wrote: LilJim mentioned York as being something of that nature. Its apparently 1.5 hrs out of london and accessible by people up north in scotland and such.

York is a fantastic city but it is way too far to commute to London. When you said somewhere outside of London I thought you meant not far outside of London; just past the outskirts in some small place. York is halfway up the country and a train ticket to London would be expensive (maybe only £10 if you book in advance but that'd probably be £20 return).

Leeds has been mentioned by Coop and BBM, I'm from there and I have to say it's a brilliant city - the night life is brilliant, there are tonnes of pubs (I think most of us prefer pubs to clubs when we're trying to get to know people :p), it's very cheap - you'll be surprised how cheap everything is compared to London. There's a huge train station (about the size of London Kings Cross) and there is an airport (Leeds & Bradford) although it's probably better to get a train to Manchester and then the train over to Leeds. As for accommodation, I don't know where you could find a nice detached house or something but it would definitely be cheaper than the flat Tom rented.

Um... Leeds is further to commute to and from London than York is and as far as I'm aware, there's no direct train line (if there is, it'll be a crawler.)

That would mean that if you were coming up from London to Leeds, you'd have to either get the West Coast line to Manchester and across to Leeds, or up the East coast line to either York or Doncaster (possibly Sheffield?) and then the line over from there. Either way, both routes are more difficult to commute to and from London for the main day (if, from Luis' latest comments, that is still the plan - doesn't seem to be) than York.

I'm not saying it SHOULD be York, btw - it just occured to me that it's pretty much bang in the middle of the UK and more or less in the centre of a lot of train networks when Luis and I were talking about it. I've travelled to York from Glasgow (requires a connecting train to Edinburgh, which takes around 40 minutes) and Edinburgh before, so that doesn't exclude some of the Scottish contingent who might want to come down and return the same day, as the trains are frequent and run reasonably late into the night. Booking in advance makes things cheap, too.

As someone else already said, there's a lot of touristy stuff to do in York, which won't appeal to many people coming from the UK, since they may have already been there/done that, or are just there solely for the meet up day itself, in which case, the emphasis is on spending time with the people there rather than anything else.

However, if people are flying in from places as far away as the US, Canada, etc, and are wanting to stay for nearly a week, I think it's important to put their needs before those coming from relatively local places. They need to do something during the rest of the week and there is plenty to do in York.

As for Train times from King's Cross to York, I wasn't THAT far off (hours:minutes below):

2:02 2:07 1:53 1:56 1:51 2:10 2:11 2:00 2:12 2:08

I'm going to stop writing about York now, because I brought up the York Races with Luis as we got a little more into conversation about a good place to hold the August meet up, if it ever transpires.... And the whole city is overrun with people and prices for accommodation, drinks and food tends to go through the roof during the Races, so I agree that it's a no go.

However, what appeals to me about a smaller city is the fact that it's easier to get to whatever accommodation you're staying in. Not everyone will be staying in whatever group apartment might be arranged.

I had a complete nightmare coming down to London (come to think about it, just about every time I've been to London, I've had problems either on the way down on the way back.)

I got caught up in two traffic accidents on the drive down, which set me back four hours. It took around 6 and a half hours to get down there and two and a half hours to drive back. That delay completely wrote off Friday night for me, which I was looking forward to, since I didn't get into the Docklands, where I was staying at a friend's apartment, until 9pm.

At that time, it wasn't worth going into the city, since that's a 50 minute train journey and the last train back was something like 12am (and I needed to eat during that time) and by the time I got a text from Tim saying that everyone was at Tower Hill, it was like 10:30pm - which is only 20 minutes away from where I was staying, had the trains been running (there were works on Jubilee) and that would have only given me around an hour there, too (or a taxi ride and I'm not sure how easily I could have hailed or ordered a cab from there.)

By the night of the meet up, after leaving the Tower Hamlet apartment and having a walkthrough meal through McDonald's (where I ran into a couple of guys trying to get me and a couple of others (anyone remember this?) to convert to Islam (I thought part of that religion prohibited followers from consuming alchohol, but these guys were obviously very drunk), Tom, Tim, Bob, Rob, Mike and I started walking back to their apartment, with the intention of getting a night bus back to their flat.....

I realised at that point that I had the only security keys for my friend's apartment I was supposed to be staying in that night... And had to get back there, otherwise he'd be potentially held as a prisoner in his own home until I managed to get back there the following day. I had to take a taxi and thankfully I did that at a point where it would cost a lot less than if I'd gone to the staff apartment - it cost £20/$35 ish. I'd be looking at three times that from the place the staff were staying at.

I suppose that's what appeals to me about choosing a smaller city - it wouldn't matter where you stay in that case, because you're never more than a 30 minute ride in a cab from one corner of the city to another.

On that note... can't believe I hadn't thought about this before. Newcastle - it's a fantastic night out, about 1 hr 30 mins to either York or Edinburgh for the tourists and VERY cheap, both in terms of accommodation, food and drink.

Was really great to meet so many of those who turned up, even if I just did meet the people who met the bar entry requirements. Apologies if I was outspoken to anyone. I have only one excuse, and that's that I was very, very drunk.

At 1/22/09 12:10 PM, barbiegoesbad wrote: Well I wasn't at the *actual* meet, but I was there on day 4 at Sports Bar and how can I forget Sound! I had a lot of fun with all of you guys! I will forward some of my pictures. I also have a video of Tom break dancing haha, if anyone could upload that (or maybe I will just put it on youtube).

Oh shit, that was you? Hah, I just thought you were someone Swain knew or met or something :x

Also, when the fuck did Tom start breakdancing? I knew I should've stayed just an hour or two later.

At 1/22/09 06:34 PM, liljim wrote: Apologies if I was outspoken to anyone. I have only one excuse, and that's that I was very, very drunk.

Haha, you introduced yourself to me atleast three times. You were like "Oh, I think we've already talked! I'm kinda drunk" after each time. =P

I guess that it isn't just marijuana that is a memory loss drug. :P

At 1/22/09 06:34 PM, liljim wrote: On that note... can't believe I hadn't thought about this before. Newcastle - it's a fantastic night out, about 1 hr 30 mins to either York or Edinburgh for the tourists and VERY cheap, both in terms of accommodation, food and drink.

I was going to suggest newcastle too, but was worried people might think it was too far north. I've heard great things about that place.

When i've seen most of the people come from the foreign countries, they've mainly wanted to either stay at the living quarters playing games, or go on a pub crawl, not really see the sights and no one really knows how to drink and eat kebabs like the geordies do, so i agree!

At 1/22/09 07:01 PM, Andersson wrote:

At 1/22/09 06:34 PM, liljim wrote: Apologies if I was outspoken to anyone. I have only one excuse, and that's that I was very, very drunk.

Haha, you introduced yourself to me atleast three times. You were like "Oh, I think we've already talked! I'm kinda drunk" after each time. =P

I guess that it isn't just marijuana that is a memory loss drug. :P

Sorry... I do remember meeting you (at least once). I think on top of everything else, the Sambuka and Champagne finished me off. :(

At 1/22/09 07:03 PM, EviLDoG wrote: When i've seen most of the people come from the foreign countries, they've mainly wanted to either stay at the living quarters playing games, or go on a pub crawl, not really see the sights and no one really knows how to drink and eat kebabs like the geordies do, so i agree!

Regardless of either - sorry for going into "You must drink this water to make you feel better" mode I took when I met you. You looked in a bad way at the time, though. Was good to meet you after years of you being around the site, though.

Shame I missed James getting hammered... :(

At 1/22/09 07:31 PM, NEVR wrote: Shame I missed James getting hammered... :(

I was pretty much gone by the time you turned up to Walkabout and had to parade Dang... Dang.. Dangan? Back home.

I managed to get most of Day 1 done.. luckly that day was pretty laid back cause most of you were still at home.

Day 1

At 1/19/09 06:41 PM, Wonchop wrote: It's time for 'List your Drinks' list all the drinks you've consumed during the night, as well as props to whoever bought them for you. Such lovely chaps.

I drank numerous lemonades and such. Poozy got me tipsy on 2 shots late on Saturday though.

At 1/20/09 05:13 AM, KaynSlamdyke wrote: * It IS possible to drag an entire Rock Band set (with XBox) and two extra bags through the London Underground. However, I will not be doing it again, owing to the fact I slipped over twice and leapt thirteen steps down Tower Hill station after tripping over them. Landed on my feet still carrying the box and had a crowd of thirty London Commuters confused at the acrobatic feat. Metal

Very much appreciated though. Made the flat far more fun than if it had been 'less active' console games or TV.

At 1/20/09 05:49 PM, Mogly wrote: I got my pictures uploaded. If there is any problems while viewing them tell me because I haven't checked it all works yet.

Very nice. Yours are probably better than mine. I didn't actually shoot the hobo, nor loads of other shit.

At 1/21/09 02:31 PM, TheHappySheep wrote: I don't see the point in doing a meet in Glasgow,

Fuck you.

At 1/21/09 02:44 PM, Luis wrote: Glasgow isnt really a prime location

Fuck you too.

At 1/21/09 05:30 PM, Fyndir wrote:

At 1/21/09 02:31 PM, TheHappySheep wrote: I don't see the point in doing a meet in Glasgow

'cause we're fucking lonely up here, you nonce. =(

Then come and meet at Pivo Pivo when I stand there waiting for you! ;-p Seriously, come on the 23rd Feb if you want.

At 1/21/09 09:47 PM, Ockeroid wrote: Also, I want the face and arse game now damn it! Bazman, you were awesome!

Bez. Short for Behrooz, Not Barry.

Don't expect it too soon, please. It's far from #1 on my list of priorities just now.

At 1/22/09 12:10 PM, barbiegoesbad wrote: Well I wasn't at the *actual* meet, but I was there on day 4 at Sports Bar and how can I forget Sound! I had a lot of fun with all of you guys! I will forward some of my pictures. I also have a video of Tom break dancing haha, if anyone could upload that (or maybe I will just put it on youtube).

!!!

What?!

I missed the dancing night out?! You didn't inform me of the dancing schedule?!

You bastards!!!

In all seriousness, that was probably my biggest disappointment this time. I would have arranged to stay longer if I'd known there was a chance of dancing on the Sunday night!

At 1/22/09 07:34 PM, liljim wrote: I was pretty much gone by the time you turned up to Walkabout and had to parade Dang... Dang.. Dangan? Back home.

Haha, I honestly didn't notice... you seemed alright at that point.

Here's hoping that there's a "further north" UK meet at some point in the future so that I can properly sit down and have a few pints with you and some of the others that I missed out on drinking with.

As long as there's no sambuca involved... I hate that stuff.

At 1/22/09 07:29 PM, liljim wrote: Regardless of either - sorry for going into "You must drink this water to make you feel better" mode I took when I met you. You looked in a bad way at the time, though. Was good to meet you after years of you being around the site, though.

Haha, no worries! I'm actually glad you and Cally did cause it made me realise how sick i was, i was throwing up well into monday and i had already been sick 3 times on that saturday and couldn't walk without getting out of breath and having to hold my sides.

Next time there's a meet i'll pace (only get a little drunk) the days prior to the main day and only get drunk on the main day!

I enjoyed meeting you too, it's good to see there are still a core of users on NG that have seen it go through most of the phases since the millenium.

I think that's what done me in, trying to meet everyone cause i was bouncing around, showing people different drinks. Especially Mike, Tim and Bob, they liked pretty much anything i had to throw at them!

Liljim is an officially cool motherfucker and anybody I catch saying different is a tosser that I'm gonna pop in the dick sucker when I see them.

He can toss back one shot like nobodies business....

Now how many times have I heard you utter the words:
"Oh god, Cally... I've given up drinking. From today! Never getting drunk again!"
Pacing goood.... :)

At 1/22/09 07:56 PM, EyeLovePoozy wrote: He can toss back one shot like nobodies business....

You can toss back a whole jug like nobodys business!

At 1/22/09 07:50 PM, EviLDoG wrote: I enjoyed meeting you too, it's good to see there are still a core of users on NG that have seen it go through most of the phases since the millenium.

I'll drink to that :P

But you shouldn't, seriously ;)

At 1/22/09 07:34 PM, liljim wrote:

At 1/22/09 07:31 PM, NEVR wrote: Shame I missed James getting hammered... :(

I was pretty much gone by the time you turned up to Walkabout and had to parade Dang... Dang.. Dangan? Back home.

Stutter there james?

Lol he didn't have to parade me back home i didn't have my ID and my tattoo's weren't sufficient identification

Hah, I didn't expect Xenon to actually show up to one of these things. Typical, I bitch at him for not showing up at any of the Sheezy meets, but when he finally attends something I don't even recognise him.
Right now I'm trying to match his face with some CBBC celebrity of sorts.

At 1/22/09 07:29 PM, liljim wrote: Sorry... I do remember meeting you (at least once). I think on top of everything else, the Sambuka and Champagne finished me off. :(

Haha, don't be sorry. I had a kickass time, and alcohol rarely does anything else than boost that feeling. =)

Also, why are so many GMT users online at this hour? =P

At 1/22/09 08:11 PM, Dangan wrote:

At 1/22/09 07:34 PM, liljim wrote:

Stutter there james?

I couldn't remember how you spelled your user name and didn't want to get it wrong. I was debating whether or not to open a new tab with the first page of the thread and decided not to bother. ;)

Lol he didn't have to parade me back home i didn't have my ID and my tattoo's weren't sufficient identification

Well, all I know is that you both disappeared after you got turned away at the door at Walkabout. With respect to your predicament at the door, your missing ID and tattoo's - that doesn't surprise me. You should see the amount of chavs that live around this place with tattoo's and they're clearly not anywhere near 18 years old.

At 1/22/09 08:17 PM, Andersson wrote: Also, why are so many GMT users online at this hour? =P

Can't speak for anyone else, but I shape my hours around EST/EDT, in keeping with the rest of the guys at the office.

wow that sounds pretty interesting.

At 1/22/09 08:22 PM, liljim wrote:

At 1/22/09 08:17 PM, Andersson wrote: Also, why are so many GMT users online at this hour? =P

Can't speak for anyone else, but I shape my hours around EST/EDT, in keeping with the rest of the guys at the office.

Aw, I had no idea that you worked night, so to say. Well then it seems like you'd do better to just work at the office as I think you mentioned, but I'm not sure if I heard you say that. =P

Also, JPI and who else bragged about the view from their hotel room. ;) Maybe not as fancy from an architectural point of view, but me, Scuzzfest and Liam were all really happy with our view aswell. =)