0730hrs, 27th February 2010.

Thought of squeezing in an entry before heading out for lecture. Yes, it’s a Saturday and I’m going for class.

Aah, the irony.

I realized my previous post on Day2 was rather long. Hang on, I meant to say freaking long. I will try to trim the 3rd addition to my Spanish Inquisition, with hopes that the newer draft will not lack the interesting bits.

Kursk 2010 is up next, and I might give hockey a go this time. Donning the colours of the M2 Lions once more will be different this year under new leadership. Winds of change will indeed bring change, let’s see how far my guy instinct proves me right this year.

Back in the day; Discipline, Fitness, Hardwork, Teamwork and finally Individual skills were the main criteria’s our coaches based on to evaluate all our players. I hope with similar benchmarks, we would send a formidable contingent and I don’t wish to bear regrets this year.

M2: Gold or bust  !

It took me a good week to arrange the pics from our winter trip and I must say, most of em’ may not have turned out well (my bad really, bad photography skills) but something about reminiscing each picture in that very location and what took place there.

Here’s to more captured moments in our photographic lives.

Failbooking, coz’ someone is definitely watching. http://failbooking.com/2010/02/25/funny-facebook-fails-selective-hearing/

LghtfHvn

27th January 2010, 0700hrs, Urbany.
Annoyed with snoozing the Iphone’s wake up call, we finally got off our asses and made way to the showers. With only 1 person showering at a time, this means the rest of us can continue our slumber till our turn came about. Awaking 3 sleeping beasts and deciding who goes next was an arduous tasks, so it boiled down to manliest bout ever; rock-paper-scissors. With Abz out, this only leaves me and Karthik.

I could’ve sworn that I won the round of rock-paper-scissors but Karthik insisted that he couldn’t see my hand and by default he wins, this was of course accompanied with a lot of mumbling. Not wanting to waste any more time, I hopped off the top bunk and grabbed my towel.

0830hrs, 3rd floor Lounge @ Urbany. Now this is what I call breakfast for champions;

1. Toasts with butter, marmalade, jam or chocolate spread. 
2. Cereals – corn flakes, coco pops etc. 
3. White coffee, OJ and an apple.

          With the sun out, there was no resisting this epic moment.

 

Guides provided in the tour package. Maps and descriptions, definitely a keeper. 29Euros for a 2 day tour package, Hell I ain’t complaining. Our route for the day, northern (blue) route. Covering the old and historic part of Barcelona.

0930, Sagrada Familia. With the sun up and about, the power of shades was called upon, notice the ‘poyo’ moment above. A 20 minute walk to Sagrada Familia and we spent 20 more admiring the beauty of this empowering structure.

This is truly one of Gaudi’s best work. We were keen on taking the tour of Sagrada Familia but ticket price at the gates would slit a hole in our pockets. Not wanting to spend too much on our 1st day here so we gave it a pass. Nonetheless, admiring the structure from the outside sufficed and we were off to the bus stop. After a short wait, we boarded the double decker open top Bus Turistic and began our journey along the northern Barca route.

Our planned destinations for the day were Parc Guell, Tibidabo, Monastir de Pedralbes, Palau Real, Camp Nou, Francesc Macia – Diagonal, MACBA-CCCB, Placa de Catalunya, Passieg de Gracia.

Unreal isn’t. There is no way in hell we’re gonna be done with half the things listed up there. We’ll see how far we go though. Next stop, Parc Guell. 

Probably making fun of our 4th wheel here, nothing new.

A public lawn bowling turf on the streets, this was taken on the way to Parc Guell. See how lively citizens here are on a weekday morning. Such scenes are inexistent from where I come from.

   Notice the clean, beautiful city. EU is indeed the way to go.

 

In comparison, ???? ( Vdnkh)  will take the place of Lake Gardens (Taman Tasik Perdana) with Parc Guell on reverse polarity. I for one, am a big fan of mother nature’s floral gifts and the true beauty that hides within this species of these immobile organisms. The world will be a better place without animals really. And no, I’m not a vegan either.

(I don’t hate animals that much to sacrifice my protein source)

Not being professional photographers certainly didn’t hold us back in capturing the beauty Parc Guell had to offer. We really had fun at this location. The park was really beautiful and to know that everything was painted by hand was  mind-blowing. There was so much detail put into the colours of the sculptures and statues. IMBA.

The walk up to the park was rather taxing on Karthik, well it was uphill. Parc Guell also marked a milestone for being the 1st location we splurged on souveniers. Much to our surprise, the shop was owned by an Indian. This was of course an opportunity for Abz to practice his much appraised Hindi. There was a school located beside the park and we managed to paparazzi a few pics during recess, playing the only sport that matters in the 21st century. There is no mistaking that 1 of em’ is a Messi in the making.                                                              

Next stop, Tramvia Blau-Tibidabo.

Tibidabo, the highest point of the Collserola massif, boasts magnificent views of the entire city. Be it the costal side or the developed city centre. This was suppose to be a recreational theme park but due to some technical issues, everything was non-operating. This destination took up 2hours of our journey due to the disabled funicular and Tram service. In replacement was a bus to bring us up for a fee of 2 Euros. Most of the other tourists were discouraged because the trip up was the main attraction via the Tramvia Blau ( Blue Tram) but this was not gonna ruin our holiday here in Barcelona. So we went with Abz’s gut instinct to tank the 1hr journey up the mountain by bus.

Tibidabo, the cathedral at the top of the mountain and scenic view of the entire city = priceless.

Of course, Abz couldn’t resist himself when he took this photo;

Hot Chic’s Ass.

If only the amusement park was operating, I bet we could’ve had more fun here. And the peculiar name of this location (Tibidabo) was also subjected to its profound use in most of our sentences from this point on. Every line we spoke ended with a ‘dibidabo’. Classic moments with Abz over-using it in every situation too.

1330 hrs, Sarria. This stop was my bad. I had mistaken the name for something else and thought that we could’ve enthralled ourselves with something worthy here but much to our disappointment. We bailed to the nearby cafe with the sounds of Karthik’s stomach growling. His craving for Panini with pollo got the better of us.

I treated myself to another round of Estrella Damm here. After lunch, we stopped by the bakery nearby and got ourselves a round of hotcakes, cookies and my new found love – Chocolate Croissants.

With our stomachs filled, we boarded the bus to our next planned destination – Monestir de Pedralbes.

This was not to be as our bloated bellies hindered our exit thus staying on till our next highlight of the tour, Camp Nou. Home of the best football club in the world, FC Barcelona.

We missed Palau Real in the process, home of King Alfonso XIII in 1924. Palau Real became home to universities and colleges, houses 2 museums and a couple of other things.

1530hrs, Camp Nou, FC Barcelona. This is a must stop for all football lovers. This football club has defined the meaning of Barcelona, as a State in Spain. You have NO idea how every citizen here places the Catalan club next to God. Let me quote a line from the guide itself,

FCB has gone way beyond a mere passion for football, and became a true social phenomenon.

This is Camp Nou, I really don’t need to explain further. We knew that squeezing FCB tour into today’s itenary wasn;t gonna  do justice to this ‘temple’. Tibidabo’s transport failure had a hand in messing our plans. So we decided to make use of our time here in Camp Nou surveying authentic FCBotiga souvenirs. Everything was indeed pricy but we did have a good idea on what to buy the next time we came here, which was post-Madrid.   

Next up, Diagonally. Ooops, I meant Francesc Macia-Diagonal. The shopping district of Barcelona a.k.a Abilash’s heaven. Much to my horror, or so I would say, I was tagging my room-mate into every shop on the Diagonal St. It wasn’t as bad as I thought but then again, this was against my religion.

This square, which is named after Francesc Macia, the president of the Catalan government at the beginning of the 20th century, is one of the city’s most elegant shopping and business centre.

After a good 1hr stroll in the Diagonal, we decided to proceed on our journey to Placa de Catalunya. This was really hard, Abz’s natural gravitational pull into every branded shop along the street was akin to resisting the forces of nature. His tiring legs gave way and we hopped onto the next bus to the last stop of the northern route, Catalunya Plaza.

2000hrs, Las Ramblas, Placa de Catalunya.

Can you feel the IMBA ?

The 40min walk down Las Ramblas was definitely one to remember. I mean, imagine Malacca’s Jonker St in the night with decent or classy-er crowds. In Malaysia, the usual scene of rempits hogging Dataran Merdeka maybe unsightly but here in Barca, it’s the total opposite.

Locals were seen seated at the park benches, reading a book under a street light, some skating and others just relishing the opportunity to view the city centre at night. There were street performers, magicians or illusionists, live statues, artists, and a row of souvenier shops along the street. Yet again, these shops are all Indian owned and having Abz around proved to be useful when purchasing souveniers from these sweet talkers. Abz claimed that the shopkeeper told one of guys to bring us to the side and get the sales, appeal to the inner Indian-ness.

Naah, we won’t be having any of that tonight, thank you.

 

A lil’ taste of home perhaps ?

We were so proud to see a store named after our capital, some sense of representation here in the distant lands of Spain. However, this feeling was short-lived. The store had ZERO relevance to our beloved Malaysia.

Damn the punters.

Too tired and lazy to walk back to Placa de Catalunya, we walked to the nearest Metro (M.Drassanes) located at the tail of Las Ramblas, on the coastal front. Switched lines at one of the  many interchanges and made our way to El Clot.

At the exit of the Clot station, we treated ourselves to a set of churros. 1Euro for a few pieces or sticks rather.

 

In the event you wanted to perform a threshold test on your pancreas, you could opt for the chocolate or caramel filled churros. The sugar rush is equivalent to 5 bottles of Coke, approximately.

As we turned in for the day, the 3 of us guys decided to spend the night drinking and perhaps hit the clubs. We finished the Malibu, took the Jacks to the 3rd floor lounge and the night of debauchery (or it should’ve been) began.

2200hrs, 3rd floor Lounge @ The Urbany.

All eyes were on us. 3 young, well-dressed, good-looking guys just strolled into the bar with a bottle of Jack. All the other clowns who were busy holding their beers, wishing they were us.

We parked ourselves at the bar, beside the pool table, inching closer to the bottom of the bottle. Invited some of the lads to join us too. As we were exchanging stories, these blokes were really surprised to know that we Malaysians would come all the way to Moscow just to learn medicine.

It was at this moment in history, we befriended probably the most liveliest cunt ever, Andrew Quinn.

All sloshed, he walks up to us and says

“Hi mates, meet Debby. This chick here will sleep with you tonight.You’ll probably need to tell her that she’s pretty.”

It doesn’t get any easier than this.

Andrew even told us that, it cost him 6 quids to get his ass here to Barcelona and this is significantly cheaper than traveling to London. If only memory served me better, I would be able to quote his exact words here. Rum, whiskey and beers all in the mix really.

After a good hour of talking, this one bloke walks up to me and says,

“ Well, I’ve gotta say. You and your mates here speak excellent English. Where are you guys from ?” He asks.

Karthik replied ” the Motherland, of course.”

“We’re from Malaysia, and English is our 2nd language. Requirement for all schools there”. 

Most of em’ are kids, just into their 1st year at college doing graphic designing or something architectural related.

Karthik had his eye on this petite chic, Melanie. For the record, he never broke contact with her through-out the whole bloody night. 

Then Andrew cordially introduces this hot chick to us, Penny. She spoke like the rest of the Brits, so assuming she was one, we were poking fun of Canada. Karthik said, Canada isn’t even a country and so on…

(I blame Barney Stintson for this).

“I’m Canadian” says Penny.

wait-for-it… BURN !!!!….

The word sour couldn’t even describe her facial expression from that moment on.

0030hrs. Outside the Urbany.

With Andrew chaperoning the 3 of us through the entire white community at the Urbany, the night was definitely not wasted as we decided to head out to BroadBar to continue partying with the wasted chicks.

We hailed a cab to BroadBar, with Andrew and James. James followed the girls in the cab next to us. Andrew began shouting out cusses towards the pitiful James, who was clearly still sober. The best line ever,

“ James, you fucking peacock. Fuckin’ virgin. Hey ladies, my man James over here, he’s a fuckin’ virgin.  Be sure to show him a good time tonight alright”.

Andrew was so wasted, he started showing off pics of his gorgeous girlfriend stored in his phone. As he was getting to the raunchier ones, his conscience kicked in and he took his mobile back from Abz. Apparently Debbie has been all over him the past day and he’s looking forward to a night without her presence.

At the BroadBar, we entered club without queuing. We had shots of vodka-redbull and allowed the night to take with the beatz coming and the jamz flowingz and the booties shakin and …..

We were there till the club closed at 5am. Apparently one of the guys got thrown out of the club after tussling with the sexy bartender. The wasted carcass of Andrew Quinn was seen lying somewhere and someone had to send him home by cab. No one knew what happened to him.

James quipped, “Andrew is a big boy, that fuckin’ tosser can take care of himself”.

0530hrs. Room 406. We too made our way home and crashed for the night. It must be said, 1st night out in Barcelona was insanely superb.

The Chronicles of Andrew’s Comedy goes unfinished as we learnt on the following day that he left his newly purchased coat at the club’s coat checker and he was pissed drunk the night before. The cab driver had to slap him a couple of times outside the Urbany. Andrew was surprised himself that he made it back to the room in 1 piece.

This has been an eventful day, a lot of sight-seeing, exhausting and to add the partying. The night out just complimented how much I loved Barcelona really. Looking forward to day 3, that is if we get up in time.

LghtfHvn

 

Vanity, my long lost buddy.

Enjoy.

Yes, I am full of myself. Thank you.

Please comment and have a nice day.

PS : The song of choice was ‘Our Solemn Hour’ by Within Temptations but YouTube had to act up thus disabling the Audio due to copyright infringements.

Tracks;

1. Dreamscape – 009 SoundSystem
2. My Turn – The Game

Damn you pirates for ruining my weekend.

LghtfHvn

I promised the girls(not Karthik or Abz) that I would be following them to Metropolis this weekend. Why did I dig my own grave you ask ?

“It’s  elementary my dear Watson, you see, I held them to their word 2 weeks ago when they agreed to join us for futsal and now, I am merely returning the favour”.

It gave me a chance to start my day at 9.00am 10.00am on a Saturday. The girls failed to mention that Metropolis is located at Metro Voikovskaya, the distal end of the dark green line.

Talk about a con job.

It took us approximately 90mins to get there. I was about to bail on them but the sight of the sun’s rays beating down the frosty streets of Moscow changed my mind. The temperature was only –14 C, couldn’t ask for a better setting.

Shades, checked.

Newly purchased Zara coat, checked.

I’m good to go.

Anu had her shopping cart all planned whereas Tina was chaperoning her, ensuring the former cake gets all her necessities and not indulging in her luxuries. When I say luxuries, I mean Body Shop products etc.

Metropolis is huge. Plus it had a Citibank branch there, +25 cool points.

The search for Anu’s jeans began and we were going in & out of every shop till we reached TopShop. Yes, this is where she finally bought the pair of jeans thus accomplishing her main agenda of the day.

I never liked shopping, so walking with them in a mall with the intent of just looking at clothes (read:window shopping) is just against my religion. For every minute spent at those shops required me to replenish some testosterones into my system. Yes, that only meant I had to crawl into SportMaster, Nike and Adidas. 

Plus, it was Valentine’s eve and red was everywhere. Promo girls were seen hustling up some guys with fragrances or other appropriate V-day gifts. Lil’ kids were seen running around with free balloons. \Of course Anu wanted one, pulling her away was quite a task.

At NewYorkers, sales were rock bottom and the place was filled with chronic shoppers. Coats and Jackets < 1000r, what a bargain… The girls treated themselves to new boots with flurry thingies.. The guys section was just depressing or too fruity for my taste.

Our last stop being TopShop, Anu bought her jeans and her stomach started grumbling from all the walking. Fearing that she might lose 5kilos more(her newly purchased jeans would not fit if that were to happen), she quickly suggested that we should have lunch at the food court upstairs.

Anu had Teremok pancakes, Tina bought herself something from Quick and I had Sbarro’s Caesar Salad, supplemented with 1/2 a Flan. To my delight, there was a bakery nearby with chocolate croissants but they were out of em’. Darn..

After lunch we headed home and Tina was kind enough to loan me her Nano. To my surprise, it’s half-filled with English songs.

My Saturday got even better with the egg tarts. gg to that.

The cherry on top of my weekend came at night, I scored 2 goals in our  weekly futsal league fixture. We won 6-0 and we are now 4th place in the league, 3 points behind the leaders and close friends, DnC. The obligatory Video will be coming soon once I sort out my Movie Maker. (reminder courtesy of CrumplerJournals. From now on referred as CJ)

LghtfHvn

 

25th January 2010, 2200hrs, Sheremetyevo II Airport. The 4 of us made our way here via the Metro, followed by the shuttle bus to the terminal and we checked in as soon as we arrived. We dined in a cafe upstairs, saw a bunch of Japanese gymnasts (or cheerleaders) waiting to board their flight. Saw a couple of other Malaysians too, heading out of Moscow for the winter break. A pretty common site around this time of the year I suppose. As we rushed to our gate, Abz was busy flirting with some chic (which nearly caused us our flight to Riga). Yes, we were the last 4 to board the flight thanks to the dimples.

After a long and tiring day, we KO-ed on the flight to Riga only wake up upon touchdown. It was snowing but it wasn’t really cold. Cleared the immigrations at midnight and made our way to waiting lounge, where we camped out till morning. The Riga airport, despite its size and modern design, was inactive till 6am. All shops and cafes were closed till b’fast and everyone was seen snuggling up in some corner and our party of four were no exception to the call of the night. We found ourselves some really fancy leather seats at the Business Lounge and parked ourselves there for the night.

 

After pizzas for breakfast, we boarded our flight and we were off to Barcelona.

 26th January 2010, 1330hrs, El Prat Barcelona. We landed and collected our luggage after a short stop at the Duty Free (where we snagged chocolates, snacks, a bottle of Malibu and Jacks). As we exited the arrival hall, we were worried about immigration and customs control. Immigration was inexistent. As the other 3 made their way to the car rental counter, I walked up to the Informations booth and inquired about the immigration contr ol in Spain and the girl over the desk replied with glee.

“You are in the EU, there is no such thing as Immigration Control”.

I then asked, “ Why is that so ?”

“Which country did you come from ?”, to which I replied Riga, Latvia.

“Well, you are in EU. That is all” I was like, ok… (not about to get my intelligence challenged here, so i backed off)

(True enough, I searched up the net on Border Control in the EU and Schengen Agreement was rather enlightening. Good read.)

We realized that it was too costly to rent a car, so we decided to heed the Car Rental chic’s advice in getting a couple of T10s and a whole lot of self travel. We followed the instructions provided by the HostelBookers on how to get to the Urbany via the Renfe Train. The El Clot – Arago station was 30mins away and the journey was rather fast and least bit boring, Graffiti was spewed all over the walls and buildings during the journey from the terminal to the city centre. The graffiti was actually kind to the eyes and zero vulgarity.

 

 

1530 hrs, Metro El Clot-Arago. We exited the station with the other Malaysians from Volgograd. One of em’ an acquaintance of our BBall Star, Priya. We walked along the Avenida Meridiana St. and there she was, the Urbany, standing tall in the evening sun. My first impression of the neighbourhod was akin to love at first sight. I mean, the streets were clean as day, walkways and bike lanes in the middle of the main road with appropriate breaks and sitting areas with plants sprouting all over. Like I said, nearly love at first sight. It was then I knew, I am definitely gonna have a blast in Barcelona.

We checked in and deposited all our belongings into the room. The room was small, simple and all you needed for travelling. There were strict rules living at the Urbany, no eating or drinking in the rooms but against our better judgment, we knew these rules were meant to be broken. So after a few shots of Jack, we began our walk along Valencia St. We also made friends with Dani, the receptionist, our hook up for the good nights in Barcelona. He even allowed us to bring our own liqour to the lounge for drinks at night. In good faith, we invited him to join us, he declined politely citing work and early morning shifts. He was really a cool guy though. He told off some chic saying, “don’t mess with fire, lady”.

1700, Av. Meridiana St.As we walked out in shorts and Ts, we drew stares from the locals. Yea, the temperature was around +6 C, to us this is nothing compared to Moscow. We were looking for a decent cafe to fill in our stomachs and in our search we stumbled upon this English Language Centre located on Mallorca St. I approached 1 of the pretty girls waiting outside the language centre, in hopes to find out a decent Spanish cafe for a dose of local delicacies.

“No speaking English”

Isn’t this a language centre ? Aren’t you a student here ? The Irony. gg to that.

She called one of tutors to entertain my qualms and the lady kindly pointed out 2 restaurants we could try. 1 of em’ was just across the street but it was really filthy and smelly. For some reason, most Spanish eateries have this habit of displaying dried tender loins. It was sick. We left immediately to the next restaurant we came across earlier.

+1 to their local Estrella Damm Draught. Thirst quenchers and really smooth on the throat. Ordering food has always been Karthik’s specialty as he was a pro when it came to ordering food in foreign languages. Word of the day, pollo, which means chicken. Naturally, every meal after that had to have pollo in it or  we ain’t buying it.

 

After lunch, we walked to Sagrada Familia. It is one of Antoni Gaudi’s masterpieces.  Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia; the Church of the Holy Family. Site for the Roman Catholics and tourist alike. Its towering structure and creative architectural design really imprinted an impression on all of us. Plus, saying Sagrada Familia like a Spaniard was kinda cool. Of course, it was getting cold and windy(walking in shorts ftw) so we hasted the walk there to locate the beginning point of Barcelona’s Bus Turistic. This was our ticket to the tour of Barcelona. We made our way back to Av. Meridiana St with reference to the Torre Agbar, the dildo building according to Dani. For some reason throughout our stay in Barca, we never had a chance to see the Torre Agbar light up at night.

As we walked back, we stopped by a grocery shop for instructions to the nearest McDonalds. To our surprise, the old man gave us directions to Glories. It was an outdoor themed shopping mall. It had everything you ever needed which included Carrefour, fast food joints and even a Subway ! It looked really pretty at night with shops lighted up, fancy street lights all over and a fabolous centre court for outdoor dining. Sweet..

Everything seemed really pricy but I guess that the Euro is such a strong currency and we Asians feel the pinch. A typical meal in any of these joints would easily come up to 10 Euros. The same combo meals or sandwiches can be bought in Malaysia for RM 10 or less. We spent the night walking about Glories, bought a few vital things from Carrefour, mixers for the drinks and some snacks.

2200 hrs, Glories. It was getting really windy now and walking around the streets of Barcelona with shorts is not advisable. So we decided to head home. Before so, we had to get obligatory meals before crashing, so Burger King was our first pick and the menu was littered with edibles. It was closing time, and people were bustling out of the complex. This part of the city is really quiet at night. The walk home was really interesting, we came across a secondary school, bars, cafes and more shops.

2300 hrs, Room 406@ the Urbanny. Before crashing for the night, we were at the 3rd floor lounge leeching off free net and checking out the juice for the night. Apparently the gang is headed out to Apollo Club. I was up for it but the others were tired and they pointed out that we have an early morning the next day. A hangover on Day 2 would ruin our Barcelona Tour so we headed back the room and ate our BK supper.

We were talking and discussing what to do on the following day. Handling all room accounts whilst munching down our Onion Rings, Chicken Wings and Nuggets. B’fast was provided by the Urbanny from 0800 to 1000 and we had to be up early for all 4 of us to shower and get ready. We had a barrel of laughs and comic moments before 1 of us (read: Karthik) started snoring.He was the first one out and we continued teasing him in his sleep hoping he would wake up with a comeback. I jotted down all the events and epic moments for the day before switching off the lights thus calling it a night.

 

 

All in all, Barcelona is a beautiful city.
The people are really fantastic and friendly.
Cost of living is on the high side.
The weather is excellent, +10 C and the sun stares at us on a daily basis. A lot of stylo moments with our shades but hey, who’s counting !

 

 

LghtfHvn