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.