Pub Quiz Update

Last night was Tuesday which means only one thing... PUB QUIZ!!! I think this will have to go down as one of our teams best ever performances, coming in 2nd and winning a round of drinks and a HK$500 voucher.

Once again however we were shown up by the "other team" who consistently beat us and frequently win the entire Quiz outright. I think we shot ourselves in the foot a little on a few questions, San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica not Puerto Rico and Mumbai is the "Gateway to India". As always with these things though I came out feeling like I now know more than when I left, like that Herbert Hoover was a Mining Engineer before he entered politics.

John brought down his step-mom, her sister and her partner to the Quiz which was great as they were much more knowledgeable about certain things than us. However they were slightly crazy after a few drinks and started shouting out answers to the music round questions before the song started playing.

One person from another team was annoying me slightly during the music rounds. She was shouting out answers correctly and winning herself free shooters, which she was refusing to drink and was fobbing them off to other members of her team who tried to make her drink them and she refused etc. What the hell was the point of shouting out the answer if you didn't want the shooter, keep your mouth shut and let the rest of us who are actually playing for the shooters have a go, or tell one of your team mates who does want a drink what the answer is.

As per usual I stayed out far too long after the end of the Quiz finishing up the free drinks and generally having a good time chatting with people. I got into a rather heated discussion with Lisa about old school rap and when it started and got generally "flossy" in my conversations with Debbie. In the end I didn't get into bed until 2am and managed to fall asleep with laptop in the middle of the bed between me and Gemma which gives you an idea of how tired I was. I am feeling a little tired this afternoon to say the least, thankfully no headache just a lot of gas which everyone in the office is having to put up with!

Music Time:

Some tripped out stuff from one of my favorite artists Devin Townsend here.

This the kind of stuff I love to listen to when I am feeling a little tired. Its got that really powerful wall of sound feeling that just seems to go right through your chest and wake you up.

Some reasons why we don't actually exist

I know that the title may sound like I am about to go off into an emo style hissy fit about how no one pays attention to me, but hear me out!

Actually this is more just a collection of some articles that I have been reading around a general theme... is this real? I was investigating the premise that everything that we experience as reality is false or as you might better know it the Matrix theorem.

Well the probability that we are not living in a computer simulation is tiny, once you get past the stage where you can either plug yourself into a machine  or the computers themselves are able to create consciousness out of thin air a simulated existence of reality will carry on until the end of the universe.

Therefore the statistical likelihood that you are living in the time before the artificial reality around us was created is tiny. Even if we are living in reality as we know it there is some rather surprising evidence coming out to suggest otherwise.

So it is likely that you are inside a computer, and it is also looking more likely that the computer you are existing inside does not actually exist itself and is rather a hologram of something else. I therefore feel like I know that we are living in a false reality. Other people may argue that they can just know that they are living in the real world but we might both be wrong for how do we actually know what we know?

Music:

Today, considering the rather out there nature of the post, I am going to leave you with a true classic song from one of the all time greats of rock/progressive music. This is one of my favorite songs to listen to when I am really tired or really drunk and I am by myself. Turn it up really loud on some decent speakers and it just envelopes you.

Busy few weeks

Ok sorry for the delay in posting my latest update. I do have a good reason this time, I have been back in dear Ol' Blighty planning my wedding. I won't bore you with the little details except to say that most of the major details (date, venue, catering, marquee, suits, dresses etc.) were done in the space of the 10days holiday I had. 7 of those days were spent suffering with a raging cold that I am still dealing with the back end of. Have you tried flying for 12hours with a cold? My ears have yet to get back to anything resembling normal (I have to keep popping them every 30mins). The other obvious downside was that this was the first holiday I had had in 6months and I have come back feeling more tired and run down than when I left.

In all honesty however I am glad that most of it is sorted, so I can relax for most of the time running up to it. My wife to be has also been fabulous at organising everything and she is actually going back to the UK in about another week to carry on with some more things.

I deeply regret missing Chinese New Year in HK but it did make me feel like an actual local as this will also be the only time of year where I will be easily able to go back home and see my family.

Things I noticed when I was back home (good and bad)

1. Man is England dirty compared to here. Seriously the amount of general dirt and crap on the pavement and on the buildings is unreal compared to HK.

2. The shops shut a ungodly early hours. 6pm closing! I don't finish work on a good day till then.

3. Nobody seems to smile as much. I haven't been back since the economic downturn took hold so I am going to play it safe and blame it on that.

4. The TV is genuinely brilliant comparatively. No adverts! God bless the BBC. I saw a load of brilliant documentaries, some pretty damn good dramas and had a proper football highlights show (Match of the Day is god).

5. Beer. Mmmm. bitter... IPA... Micro Brewery... if you haven't been to England you have no idea about beer. I had 5 beers that you would not be able to find outside of the pubs that were serving them. I went to a hamlet that had no services, only 10 houses but 2 pubs! The only way that works is if you are making some damn fine beer. If you haven't been to England, or have only been to London then you haven't really lived. Ask me nicely and I will take you on a proper tour someday.

Enough of that nonsense its time for some music.

I can play this one.... just. Seriously this is a mind boggling hard song to play well on all of the instruments and they just make it look so damn easy. You can also see that John Petrucci (the guitarist) can't actually hear anything properly from the way he is gesturing at the tech guys, which just makes me wonder how in the hell he managed to play this song properly.