Clear! I still have an urge to use a defibrillator on someone. If anyone wants to volunteer to [A] buy me a defibrillator (they retail at about £1000 apparently) and [B] let me shock them with it, then feel free to contact me.

Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post, I spent this past weekend in glorious Hull (once again). My memory of much of the weekend is pretty much blank as I spent most of the weekend either under the influence (of alcohol that is, not just pounding bass lines - though they may have factored into it at some point) or recovering from the effects of said past-time. Yes, I am labelling being wasted as a past-time - it's right up there with golf, air-fix models and making furniture out of people; whatever floats your boat. Alcohol floats my boat as it's the only one which is a liquid; ba-boom.

I arrived in Hull on the friday and presumably spent much of the day doing something, or even very little, with a group of people I know. Anything more specific than that may be pushing it. Things I do remember is getting to see some friends that I hadn't seen for a fair while, one of whom was the illustrious Rami (who has yet to update his blog in ages I'd like to add). At some point in the evening, I left the group of friends I was with to meet up with some other friends down the road, which is where things started to slip slightly. All I remember is that the rest of the evening contained lots of wine, whiskey (an expensive brand, but horrible none the less) and lager. I did however learn the next day that it was probably a mistake to mix large amounts of said drinks together as saturday saw me enduring one of the worst hangovers I have had in quite some time. I can't say I am surprised as the last time I had mixed wine, spirits and pints (cider rather than lager) I ended up being sick for 3 hours. Glad to see I remembered that valuable lesson.

After spending the vast bulk of saturday a worrying shade of grey and generally feeling and looking like crap, I then decided it was time to sort myself out. By about 4pm, after about 2 hours in a pub, I finally braved my first pint (well second pint - I gave the first one away as I couldn't face it) and fortunately it went down rather well, which then confirmed that I was recovered enough to start drinking again. I trekked back to the house, got a shower and got ready for the second night of drinking.

The night started off at the casino. Why I keep going there I don't know - I think it's the gold card with "Lifetime membership" written on it. It makes me feel like a... person when I look at it - which is rather nice. In record time I managed to lose £10 and decided that I had had enough of gambling. My friends around me were doing badly, right up until the point that I left them and went to the bar; as soon as I was gone they started to do well - I think this is yet more confirmation that I am a cursed man. Therefore I shall not leave them alone to do well next time as misery loves company. After the casino we went to Pozition and proceeded to destroy ourselves - well, by 'ourselves' I guess I really mean 'myself'. Only 4 of us went - Rami, Rebecca, Tom and myself. I was on a mission to get smashed, mainly due to the usual reason that I am an idiot. After many vodka and lemonades, Rami (knowing that Tom and myself will drink anything that is free) decided to buy us horrible drinks - namely dodgy shots in test tubes that can only be described as tasting like a binge drinker's vomit. These were then followed by double Sambukas - a drink that I particularly dislike, as aniseed is possibly the most horrible thing you could force someone to ingest without actually wanting them to die. When we were considerably worse for wear, we left Pozition (presumably around 1-2ish) and Tom and myself went to a house party (well, an eviction party to be more precise) at Pearson park. After saying hello to some people we knew, I then found an arm chair and fell asleep for 3 hours. I left the house party at around 4ish on my own and walked back to the house I was staying at and soon realised that it was freezing cold. It wasn't that I felt freezing, but I noticed that all the cars were covered in a thick layer of frost and I wasn't wearing a jacket or anything remotely warm; so I knew that as I sobered up I would really start to feel it. I then got back to the house to find that everyone was asleep (strangely enough) and the door was locked. I then rang Tom who was still at the house party, buried under a pile of attractive women, and had to get him to leave and come back and let me in. Suffice to say, he was not best pleased.

Sunday went more smoothly than saturday in that my hangover was reasonably minor, despite the amount I drank and that Tom felt terrible. In my mind, Tom's suffering and my lack of it made up for me being the only ill one the day before, but this is just because I am a horrible person. This did go to prove our theory that if you go out drinking heavily two nights in a row, the hangover after the second night is never as bad as the hangover from the first night; therefore, whenever you're feeling terrible from a previous night out, just start drinking again - good old 'hair of the dog'.

Sunday also saw Nick create some of his famous heart-stopping, artery-blocking, stomach-churningly-buttery rice crispie squares. Now I know this has sparked everyone's interest so I have included the recipe below. Hopefully Nick won't chose to violate me for giving away trade secrets, as this is on a par with giving away information on how to create biological warfare agents.

Ingredients:

7 Mars bars (full size)
Half a pack of butter (roughly 125 grams)
Rice Crispies (big pile of)

Recipe:

1. Break the mars bars into small chunks and place within a large microwaveable bowl.
   
2. Then add the butter.
3. Place the bowl into a microwave and heat until the mixture has melted and formed a chocolatey, buttery mess.
4. Add rice crispies and stir into the mixture. Add as many rice crispies as the mixture can stretch too, making sure that they are all nicely covered.

5. Once all the rice crispies are covered, spoon the mixture out into an appropriately sized baking tray.
6. Place the baking tray into the fridge for approximately an hour or so until the mixture has solidified.
7. Removed from fridge and cut the rice crispie cake into small squares.
8. Serves about 1000 people, given that 1 small bite is your recommended daily calorie intake for the day and recommened fat intake for the week. Give to people you don't like or who are looking to put weight on fast. Alternatively, put less butter in and it's actually really nice.

Anyway, interesting culinary adventures aside, sunday was taken at a relatively relaxed pace - inpart due to the onset of liver failure likely to occur in some of us had we opted for a heavy night again. Sunday evening was spent chilling like villains at the pub, before returning to Evil Ian's house to watch the majority of the director's cut of Donnie Darko which had been free with that day's copy of the Sunday Times. It's a fantastic film, but we were too tired to watch it all and consequently fell asleep during it.

On monday afternoon I returned home to resume my search for an ever elusive job and finally fill in my application form to become a teacher in Japan; which I have now finally started to make progress on. Tomorrow I am going to go into town and perhaps pick up a book about Japan to help me fill in the form convincingly, as I don't think I can just get by on saying "It looked pretty in Memoirs of a Geisha and House of Flying Daggers". Coincidently, for anyone wondering, both those films are excellent and really worth watching.