So, I’ve been to West Coast Riot - a nice little one-day punk festival in Gothenburg, Sweden. After some initial hesitation me and Sophie finally got our rear ends off there. And boy, am I happy we did! I may not have passed the magical age of 30 yet, but I still feel like quoting Danny Glover now and then. “Getting too old for this excrement,” you know. I was a little sore afterwards, but - apparently - I’m not too old for some good ol’-fashioned punk! Let’s see if I have some ridiculously small pictures I can tease you with:
Flogging Molly kicks quite a bit of behind.
Bad Religion kicks even more backside.
NOFX kicks immense amounts of ass. Here’s the illustrious El Hefe…
…And Fat Mike as well. As you can see from the pictures, with each band I got progressively closer to the stage. For NOFX there was no question about it: of course I’d be thrashing up front.
There was a bit of a crowd. Nothing spectacular, but apparently 10800 people attended the show according to WCR’s homepage. Not bad!
One of the coolest aspects of the festival was that I received an e-mail from an old high school friend a few weeks ago. We hadn’t spoken to each other for five years, and all of the sudden I get this e-mail saying “Hey, I read on your blog that you’re going to West Coast Riot! Me too; let’s meet up!”
Sweet mother of fuck - this bloggin’ thing is actually doing some good. Thanks for an excellent time, Rangou!
Edit: On popular demand I’m adding a pic of myself as well. I know, I know - my eyes are all puffy and tired. Told you I’m getting old!
So, I’ve been away for two weeks on a trip to Taiwan and Singapore, and it was pretty awesome. Nothing spectacular happened, but on the other hand I think I’m pretty happy that I didn’t get lost in the mountains or robbed or anything like that; a nice relaxed trip can also be fun. I won’t bore you with transcripts of the days upon days of meetings (the small fact that I’d be breaking all kinds of NDAs has nothing to do with it at all, of course), so I’ll jump right into the photos.
Oh, and just so you know: these were taken with my awful cell phone cam since my proper digital camera was supposed to be used at another occasion. (But of course it never did get used, so I had to make do with a crappy camera while the nice little Exilim thingie was lying unused and unloved at home! Boo-hoo!)
The proper way to start every trip… Beer at Arlanda airport.
I absolutely hate seafood, so I had a hard time keeping things in my stomach while a couple of colleagues ate things like this in Taiwan. This is where the “fear and loathing” part comes in.
Here’s where I’d place some nice images of Taipei 101, the totally sweet and amazingly high skyscraper located in Taipei. But - of course - I got no good images at all. I’ll just tell you that it was an amazing experience to look out over the city from the ~90th floor. I got the strongest urge to go “I crush your head, tiny humans! I crush your whole car! Crush crush! I crush your building, puny ground-dweller!”
Let’s go on to Singapore instead, since I’ve already reported on a trip to Taiwan last year.
No trip to Singapore is complete without a visit to the Long Bar, home of the Singapore Sling. I hadn’t heard the stories about the peanuts on the floor, so my initial reaction upon sitting down was “oh man! we got a really dirty table!” …Don’t know what I mean about the peanuts? Use the almighty Google!
After a meeting with a company I won’t name (but oh dang, there’s most of the logo present in the pic), we got to try their F1 simulator. Apparently they’re sponsoring a Grand Prix that will be held in Singapore in September. Let me tell you, I am not a good race car driver. This was way harder than Gran Turismo 3!
We got some nice sightseeing done a couple of the days. Singapore really has some amazing sights. To the left you have the parliament, and to the right you have a spacey building close to Sim Lim Square - the place where you can literally drown in electronics.
Speaking of drowning, I wouldn’t want to swim in this… Such a clean city, but that water…
I just had to have a picture of the “no durians” sign. Awesome. I still haven’t seen one of those fruits, but I smelled it now and then. Pretty potent stench, that!
What? That word you keep using, I don’t think it means what you think it means. Or did they really have the guts to shut down a street in order to have some kids with laptops hack a bank or something? Or am I only biased about the use of the word “hacking”?
Spontaneous comments about the trip:
- I wish I had gone when there wasn’t a rainy season.
- Frog tastes like tiny tiny chicken.
- Taiwan is a wonderous mix of high tech and down-to-earth Chinese.
- Taipei 101 is a must-see for all visitors.
- Night market means lots of food stands and even more stands filled with cheap copies of known brands.
- I have never seen such a clean city as Singapore.
- Clarke Quay is awesome, but it’s nigh on impossible to find a table at that microbrewery place on a Friday night.
- I will never ever break the law in Singapore. Oh, darn - I already did! I smuggled chewing gum into the country.
- Alcohol is ridiculously expensive in Singapore.
- And speaking of alcohol: when you order a White Russian in Singapore, it will be layered with the Kahlua at the bottom. Barbarians!
