» Terrible food

Fish Head Soup..
I was on a job on main land China, where as has already been pointed out, they don't tend to have alot of lovely crispy duck with scrummy pancakes and a nice chicken chow mein. Oh no.
After eating various bits of crushed animals in peoples homes, we had a night out in the capital of Schezuan Province, Cheng Du. Special restaurant serves Fish Head Soup. You sit around a huge boiling bowl of stuff in the middle of the table, into which you have to chuck stuff in to cook then attempt to scoop out and eat, if it hadn't floated off round the table! Like a meat fondue on a grand scale. So they bring out a succession of stuff, including the fish heads (there is supposed to be meat in the cheeks!) some veg, lots of barely identifiable frozen meat shavings(?), but the over-riding memory is of the pigs penis and the solid lumps of pig blood.
Mind you this was eased down with plenty of beer, followed by rice spirit, which can only likened to high octane rocket fuel that is drunk only from thimbles. 6 or 7 and you don't care about the chewy pig cock in your mouth!
Well I didn't anyway..

Soon after that I did get food poisoning from some spicy prawns (should've been a bit wary as we were a fuck of a long way from ANY sea!)

What ensued was many many painful hours spent naked, hovering over open toilets, the ones in the floor with foot rests. You had to get naked because it was just all too messy for clothes..

Ah, I'll never forget that..
(Thu 17th May 2007, 20:45, More)

» Picky Eaters

Now I'm not picky but..
I was in Japan, working, and we had a very special dinner thrown for us. They were serving poison blowfish in various forms, fin in hot sake, sashimi etc.. In truth all very bland and not tingly on the lips or tongue in the slightest. Could've been the sheer volume of Asahi beer we were consuming! (To serve it legally you have to remove the majority of poisonous bits, guts gonads, bits and bobs..) What topped the meal off was the small dish of enourmous LIVE prawns brought out to us. One each. The restarateur demonstrated how to eat them. The body section had been peeled, you grasp the head and the tail, dip it in soy sauce (as if to rub salt in the wound) then bite the body out. Easy. NOt to be seen to shy from a challenge and we were pissed enough to go for it. Old friend went first. Never seen a man of the world so lost for words. He said later it spasmed as he bit down. My go. Picked the bastard up and it leapt out of my hands, straight into the dish of soy sauce. Finally got a hold of 'im. Tasted surprisingly pleasant. Then they took the heads away to deep fry. They don't like waste..

Apologies, was this off topic?
Knackers.
(Thu 1st Mar 2007, 14:54, More)

» Where is the strangest place you have slept?

Moscow, what a city!
I just remembered one! I went to Moscow to work for about 4 days.
We flew in and met our fixer who tells us that due to the relative short notice she'd had, finding a suitable hotel had been
tricky so she shuttled us off in taxis to a central location on the Moskva River.
We get out at the entrance to a floating hotel. Whatever, we think, looks fun.
It had a big flashing casino sign and a restaurant and a night club.
Fantastic. We check in, we get cabins! Cool.
We stow all our gear (check the nautical terms there) and head for the restaurant.
We are in Russia to shoot part of a documentary about fighter planes and tomorrow we are scheduled to head out to the Sukhoi factory.
So we eat. And since we're in Moscow, we decide to have a few vodkas.
We had a lovely time. Food was ok, vodka was great.
Turns out the only toilet that served the restaurant was 3 decks down and through the onboard nightclub.
No problem.
As each of us made innocent use of the facilites we began to collectively notice
the overwhelming presence of alot more ladies than men on this barge?
And they were all rather lovely.
Now most ladies in Moscow are lovely as it happens but in the ultra-violet
night club they weren't really wearing very much either!

So it dawns on our dumb English arses that this is a certain kind of leisure facility.
Still no problem.
There is no apparent pressure or atmosphere, we're men of the world. Oh and so was the female producer with us!
So we laughed and drank more vodka.
We ended up with enough courage to think fuck it, lets retire to the nightclub to continue drinking! Huzzah!
We had a right old time, chatting to the lovely ladies and drinking vodka.
Nothing untoward happened, we couldn't have afforded it anyway, 900USD apparently! :)

Thats kinda the end of the story.
We slept on a floating Russian knocking shop.
(However I did drink possibly more than I had ever drunk before,
ended up throwing up all over my cabin bunk, being undressed by the producer then locked in my cabin from the outside cos
I had all the camera kit in my room. Then in the morning suffered the worst hangover in history whilst waiting at the gates of Sukhoi,
where they steadfastly refused to let us in. Can't imagine why. Flew home the following evening without shooting a frame.

But, Moscow what a city... )

*Looks up*
God, thats long!
(Thu 4th Jan 2007, 20:45, More)

» Work Experience

Work Experience these days?
There was a work experience girl at work today. She stood around and did fuck all, didn't help out, ate a big dunch and buggered off before 6. (We finished at 8.45!). It turns out that the law says these days that work experience people can't actually DO ANY WORK, cos they're usually kids, they can only 'observe'. Waste of bloody time. If you can't give a 16yr old a daft job, show them what its like in the REAL world, then they're likely to think its all a bleedin' breeze. Oh things have changed since my day.. Bah!
(Wed 16th May 2007, 23:57, More)

» Best Graffiti Ever

This is a killer..
Once on a wall on the corner of, I think, Claremont Road in Leytonstone, now not there no more..

Wait for it..

'Seatbelts?'

Meh.
(Tue 8th May 2007, 9:47, More)