DAY 9
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2008:
(As continued from my former blog at Modified.in; my trip to Prague, Czech Republic for Worlds. "Day 9" = my ninth day in Prague, not to be confused with the ninth day of Worlds (especially since Worlds only lasts 8-ish days).)
Today I opened with trying to compile a list of the people I'd met total so far. Clearly it was a flop, as the list is quite short. But here are the people I wrote down off of the top of my head at that particular moment: Lise + Anne, Mads Hole, Aleksi Airenen, Mikko Lepsito (though I don't think I ever official met him, but he gave me a nod!!), Sergey Kozlov (was really nice and seemed enthused to meet me :)), Ales Zelinka (knew my name!); Marco Hartig, Kjolpa (in retrospect I'm not entirely sure I correctly associated the Estonians with their Modified screen names... Rozo (who was injured), Kuba and GF (again, sorry for forgetting her name and not looking it up!) Geilnik; Ners, Olaf, Hania, Verena, Mitko; Caroline Birch, Nathan; Flavio. It's obviously a bad and incomplete list. Taylor should definitely be on there. We liked her a lot.
We woke up around 12. I got ready. But Marita wanted to just stay in and read, or go out instead of going to the venue, not knowing if any freestyle would be going on at all, and be stuck indoors (it was still raining) with only potentially watching net to entertain us. I thought that the possibility of ANY freestyle would be worth the trek, so I decided to go check it out. I went and got some groceries alone and headed off. Luckily the tram was running properly this day and I didn't have to figure out alternative routes on my own! I got to the venue, and lo, only net. What a bloody disappointment. I looked around and barely recognized ANYONE. I finally saw Mathieu and Ianek. I went and said hi briefly, and they headed out a minute after. I was, like, "This is so incredibly lame." And left after staying for about 5 minutes. What the fuck, Worlds? So I went back home and fed Marita with my groceries. Oh, on the walk from the stadium to the tram stop I saw Andrew Grant and Max Kerkhof. I guess they were all set to watch some net? Andrew complimented me on my shirt. I said I got it at Value Village.
Oh no, wait, I got back and we picked up some more groceries after I woke her up... I think. Then she wanted to go see the Jewish layered cemetery that we were told by multiple people was a must-see sight in Prague. We subwayed to the Old Town and after wandering, realized that we had passed it many times and many times before that. Eventually we realized that it was Saturday... Sabbath? So, it was not open, unfortunately. What a bummer. And I felt bad that the one thing Marita wanted to see, we weren't able to. So I had some sightseeing ideas, though Marita wasn't too keen on doing more of just what I wanted to do. We went and did a tour of stuff I'd seen in Vasek videos. We went in search of "the cable cars" that are supposed to go up the hill to the rip-off Eiffel Tower (that is a few feet taller than the real tower in Paris (counting the hill... Those cheater-pants Czechs!)), which turned out just to be a kind of above-ground train that goes diagonally up. I don't know why I thought cable cars? Anyway, so that led to a beautiful view of the city from up high, which I also recognized. I paid for Marita's way to go up the tower with me (she wasn't keen on it), and I whined the whole way up about how scary and high it was (I'm very afraid of heights!). Oh, it says something about "Lennon Wall", too.. I forget what that was. Is that just the wall in "Kampa Park"? I was never able to find the place that looked like the place in the actual "Kampa Park" video with Vasek... maybe they painted over the wall since? Anyway, also, on the way up to the "cable cars", we saw the place where Eli's Ales video was filmed in front of the steps with the creepy statues. I took pictures of all of this, but it's on actual film, for which I will have to pay, like, $50 to develop all my rolls.
Anyway, then to satisfy Marita, I said we would go to Cafe Ebel to eat, since we were hungry. I have a note that she was sick? Felt sick? I don't remember specifically. So we trammed... I think. Hmm. I'm confused in which order things came. I guess we went to try to subway to Cafe Ebel. On the way, we were in New Town for the first time, which was quite nice. We were walking to Cafe Ebel, and I suggested that maybe we could try a local restaurant, something new, since I think we were having trouble finding Ebel, and we were really hungry. So we stopped at a local pizza joint. It was incredibly lame, we discovered. The pizza was crap, and they wouldn't give us tap water (big surprise!) We tried to order, like, juice, I think, but they didn't have it. So we tried to get milkshakes; nope. Also, I think our first choice of pizza they didn't "have"... Pretty lame. Right, so then we got on the tram. We had a nice tour of the city on the tram, saw some new nice churches and whatnot, and then I dropped her off at the event site tram stop and continued on back to the hostel to get my shred stuff (just in case footbag might actually happen! CROSS YOUR FINGERS!!!!)
I got back to the event site and just caught women's routines. I don't have a note saying so, but if I remember, the dumbass fucker we had all come to know and love as the soundman fucked up Taylor's routine music. I was so angry. They let her start over later, like... almost immediately after after she was all spent. I felt so bad for her, but she roughed it out! I actually managed to play a bit of hack at this point. Someone told us that there was some small room in the back of the complex somewhere where people were warming up and shredding. I grabbed my stuff and went immediately. I think it may have been Ken who told us. It ended up being quite lame, as per usual, a la Prague. It was an okay gym, about the size of the teeny one used for comp, but it was full of freestyle disc players. There was Anssi, Honza, some of the players I met in my first circle whose names I forgot... a couple other awesome players. Sergey for a bit, I think. Anssi hit DDD swirl for the first time, and BSOSed it in that same run (though I missed it, Marita said it was big and made me ask what he hit). I played a bit with the guys from my first circle, though really, really badly. No, wait, these guys I hadn't met before, the guys from my first circle were warming up a bit on their own by where I left Marita sitting (reading my Ghost in the Shell 2 manga (which was our shared reading material in Prague)). When we first got in the gym, there was a closed set up bleachers (so, like, one really, really, high bench basically, like, head-height), and Ken was trying to climb up onto them. We were all kinda, like, "Uhhh, careful Ken..." Oh there was a girl's circle too -- Caro, Taylor... someone else? Oxana? I didn't talk to Oxana at all this Worlds, which I was disappointed with; I liked her a lot in Florida. I played a bit with Taylor after. I played really, really bad in that gym. Someone also came in and dimmed the lights on us. Hooray. Like, an organizer. There was also a moment where Honza asked my whole circle to move away from him where he was warming up, which I guess is understandable, but I felt that it was said in a really rude way, and he had done this earlier, like one of the first days at the track too. It did not give me a good impression.
We watched open routine finals. Sergey went dropless! Vasek went dropless, and his routine was really neat -- it was a mash-up of different rad songs, and well choreographed (very low difficulty though!). We decided to skip the party, since I was really disappointed with Worlds, and just would rather spend time alone with Marita. Oh yeah, not only did the sound guy fuck up Taylor's song, and continue to play the music way too loud, but he played the completely wrong song for Norek. Norek was, like, "What??" and gestured semi-wildly at the sound table. After, I wanted to shred a bit, but, nope, we were kicked out of the gym immediately. Yay Worlds. So yeah, we didn't go to the party, but found out after the fact that it was probably the best part of all of Worlds. Great. Apparently there was the hardest shred there at the party, three floors of shred! And awards ceremony and all. Norek got BAP, as we all know already. His BAP name is Hi-tech, and I'm sure I explained why in some post, though maybe not in the write-up, though I don't care at this point. Kinda wanna wrap it up. I'm getting bad vibes from recapping such bad experiences. Caroline Birch asked me to sign her Worlds poster. I felt bad that I only wrote my name. I kinda wanted to write a nice message, but couldn't think of anything worthwhile or genuine. A couple people took pictures with me; Marco the day before, and the black spiky haired guy in the back gym this last night.
The next day, Marita and I were planning to go film me playing hack in Prague for my Europe video, and then leave in the evening for Vienna, just to chillax before having to be back in Munich for her work for Wednesday. It sounded like a great plan. We talked to Alex, though he said that everyone was gonna be in Berlin, so we wouldn't have a hacker to stay with. He did say that a bus was, like, 25 Euro to get there, though -- supa cheap! Then, we were on our way out to the tram stop to go to old town to film me. We saw all of the people waiting for the bus to leave for Berlin training camp. We stopped and talked to Ben Roscoe, and Andrew Grant, and Andrew McCarger, and then Jakob and Paul were there while we were talking to someone, and they were, like, "You guys should come to Berlin." And we were, like, "Hehe, yeah." And then we asked how much it would be, just out of curiosity, and it turned out to be, like, the same price, but somewhere else we had wanted to go anyway, and with all of these people we knew and love. Within 5 minutes or less, we were completely convinced. They said we had 30 minutes before they left, so we flew back to the hostel and started packing. Marita tried to get a refund on some crap, but failed on account of the hostel's lameness. But we got our stuff together and... went to Berlin. Haha. It was fun, and I guess I'll just more or less end there. I had a bit more detail, but nothing written about Berlin, really, so, this is the end. Worlds 2008, Prague.
In other news, my job is awesome. Tomorrow I'm meeting Manna for after-school shred. Should be a blast. When it gets cold out we hope to get one of our school gyms to hack in. I'm gonna ask my principal. Then I can expose the sport to my school (his already knows all about it :p). Also, on another note, I applied for a PERMANENT library clerk job at another school, which is right beside the school I worked at last year. Permanent would mean benefits, good pay, the 2-month summer and... permanency! So I would just stay there without having to worry about losing my job on account of seniority or any other crap. I would be part of the union, and I would be able to stay as long as I want. Apparently I came "very highly recommended" :) Though, so I applied to this other school, and kind of figured I have a good chance, on account of my rep, but wasn't really sure or banking on it. Plus, the job posting said "12-month", which for anyone other than teachers means you work through the summer (teachers are 12-month with a 2-month paid holiday), so I kinda also gave up not wanting that. Then my dad came home today and showed me an amended job posting for the same position.. amended to "10-month". Sick! So now I want it again, pllluuuss. Apparently my old principal was talking to my dad and asked how I was doing and what I'm up to, and my dad said that I'm library clerk at this one school and watching the opening at the other (right by my old school where I worked under this principal). My old principal told my dad instantly, oh, well I'll talk to "____" (the principal at the school I'm applying for) and talk him up -- 'cause they are next door schools, and my old principal absolutely loved me and felt bad that I lost my job when he almost guaranteed that nobody would apply for it. So... I may be a permanent library clerk soon-ish. The only downside would be that it's much further away than this current school... and not right next door to Manna's school. (It's also high school, which I'm not as keen about as elementary). We'll see how this plays out. I miss Marita a ton, though she keeps calling her mom from India to say she's okay and makes sure that her mom calls me to let me know, which is really sweet.
K, bath and sleep time shortly.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2008:
(As continued from my former blog at Modified.in; my trip to Prague, Czech Republic for Worlds. "Day 9" = my ninth day in Prague, not to be confused with the ninth day of Worlds (especially since Worlds only lasts 8-ish days).)
Today I opened with trying to compile a list of the people I'd met total so far. Clearly it was a flop, as the list is quite short. But here are the people I wrote down off of the top of my head at that particular moment: Lise + Anne, Mads Hole, Aleksi Airenen, Mikko Lepsito (though I don't think I ever official met him, but he gave me a nod!!), Sergey Kozlov (was really nice and seemed enthused to meet me :)), Ales Zelinka (knew my name!); Marco Hartig, Kjolpa (in retrospect I'm not entirely sure I correctly associated the Estonians with their Modified screen names... Rozo (who was injured), Kuba and GF (again, sorry for forgetting her name and not looking it up!) Geilnik; Ners, Olaf, Hania, Verena, Mitko; Caroline Birch, Nathan; Flavio. It's obviously a bad and incomplete list. Taylor should definitely be on there. We liked her a lot.
We woke up around 12. I got ready. But Marita wanted to just stay in and read, or go out instead of going to the venue, not knowing if any freestyle would be going on at all, and be stuck indoors (it was still raining) with only potentially watching net to entertain us. I thought that the possibility of ANY freestyle would be worth the trek, so I decided to go check it out. I went and got some groceries alone and headed off. Luckily the tram was running properly this day and I didn't have to figure out alternative routes on my own! I got to the venue, and lo, only net. What a bloody disappointment. I looked around and barely recognized ANYONE. I finally saw Mathieu and Ianek. I went and said hi briefly, and they headed out a minute after. I was, like, "This is so incredibly lame." And left after staying for about 5 minutes. What the fuck, Worlds? So I went back home and fed Marita with my groceries. Oh, on the walk from the stadium to the tram stop I saw Andrew Grant and Max Kerkhof. I guess they were all set to watch some net? Andrew complimented me on my shirt. I said I got it at Value Village.
Oh no, wait, I got back and we picked up some more groceries after I woke her up... I think. Then she wanted to go see the Jewish layered cemetery that we were told by multiple people was a must-see sight in Prague. We subwayed to the Old Town and after wandering, realized that we had passed it many times and many times before that. Eventually we realized that it was Saturday... Sabbath? So, it was not open, unfortunately. What a bummer. And I felt bad that the one thing Marita wanted to see, we weren't able to. So I had some sightseeing ideas, though Marita wasn't too keen on doing more of just what I wanted to do. We went and did a tour of stuff I'd seen in Vasek videos. We went in search of "the cable cars" that are supposed to go up the hill to the rip-off Eiffel Tower (that is a few feet taller than the real tower in Paris (counting the hill... Those cheater-pants Czechs!)), which turned out just to be a kind of above-ground train that goes diagonally up. I don't know why I thought cable cars? Anyway, so that led to a beautiful view of the city from up high, which I also recognized. I paid for Marita's way to go up the tower with me (she wasn't keen on it), and I whined the whole way up about how scary and high it was (I'm very afraid of heights!). Oh, it says something about "Lennon Wall", too.. I forget what that was. Is that just the wall in "Kampa Park"? I was never able to find the place that looked like the place in the actual "Kampa Park" video with Vasek... maybe they painted over the wall since? Anyway, also, on the way up to the "cable cars", we saw the place where Eli's Ales video was filmed in front of the steps with the creepy statues. I took pictures of all of this, but it's on actual film, for which I will have to pay, like, $50 to develop all my rolls.
Anyway, then to satisfy Marita, I said we would go to Cafe Ebel to eat, since we were hungry. I have a note that she was sick? Felt sick? I don't remember specifically. So we trammed... I think. Hmm. I'm confused in which order things came. I guess we went to try to subway to Cafe Ebel. On the way, we were in New Town for the first time, which was quite nice. We were walking to Cafe Ebel, and I suggested that maybe we could try a local restaurant, something new, since I think we were having trouble finding Ebel, and we were really hungry. So we stopped at a local pizza joint. It was incredibly lame, we discovered. The pizza was crap, and they wouldn't give us tap water (big surprise!) We tried to order, like, juice, I think, but they didn't have it. So we tried to get milkshakes; nope. Also, I think our first choice of pizza they didn't "have"... Pretty lame. Right, so then we got on the tram. We had a nice tour of the city on the tram, saw some new nice churches and whatnot, and then I dropped her off at the event site tram stop and continued on back to the hostel to get my shred stuff (just in case footbag might actually happen! CROSS YOUR FINGERS!!!!)
I got back to the event site and just caught women's routines. I don't have a note saying so, but if I remember, the dumbass fucker we had all come to know and love as the soundman fucked up Taylor's routine music. I was so angry. They let her start over later, like... almost immediately after after she was all spent. I felt so bad for her, but she roughed it out! I actually managed to play a bit of hack at this point. Someone told us that there was some small room in the back of the complex somewhere where people were warming up and shredding. I grabbed my stuff and went immediately. I think it may have been Ken who told us. It ended up being quite lame, as per usual, a la Prague. It was an okay gym, about the size of the teeny one used for comp, but it was full of freestyle disc players. There was Anssi, Honza, some of the players I met in my first circle whose names I forgot... a couple other awesome players. Sergey for a bit, I think. Anssi hit DDD swirl for the first time, and BSOSed it in that same run (though I missed it, Marita said it was big and made me ask what he hit). I played a bit with the guys from my first circle, though really, really badly. No, wait, these guys I hadn't met before, the guys from my first circle were warming up a bit on their own by where I left Marita sitting (reading my Ghost in the Shell 2 manga (which was our shared reading material in Prague)). When we first got in the gym, there was a closed set up bleachers (so, like, one really, really, high bench basically, like, head-height), and Ken was trying to climb up onto them. We were all kinda, like, "Uhhh, careful Ken..." Oh there was a girl's circle too -- Caro, Taylor... someone else? Oxana? I didn't talk to Oxana at all this Worlds, which I was disappointed with; I liked her a lot in Florida. I played a bit with Taylor after. I played really, really bad in that gym. Someone also came in and dimmed the lights on us. Hooray. Like, an organizer. There was also a moment where Honza asked my whole circle to move away from him where he was warming up, which I guess is understandable, but I felt that it was said in a really rude way, and he had done this earlier, like one of the first days at the track too. It did not give me a good impression.
We watched open routine finals. Sergey went dropless! Vasek went dropless, and his routine was really neat -- it was a mash-up of different rad songs, and well choreographed (very low difficulty though!). We decided to skip the party, since I was really disappointed with Worlds, and just would rather spend time alone with Marita. Oh yeah, not only did the sound guy fuck up Taylor's song, and continue to play the music way too loud, but he played the completely wrong song for Norek. Norek was, like, "What??" and gestured semi-wildly at the sound table. After, I wanted to shred a bit, but, nope, we were kicked out of the gym immediately. Yay Worlds. So yeah, we didn't go to the party, but found out after the fact that it was probably the best part of all of Worlds. Great. Apparently there was the hardest shred there at the party, three floors of shred! And awards ceremony and all. Norek got BAP, as we all know already. His BAP name is Hi-tech, and I'm sure I explained why in some post, though maybe not in the write-up, though I don't care at this point. Kinda wanna wrap it up. I'm getting bad vibes from recapping such bad experiences. Caroline Birch asked me to sign her Worlds poster. I felt bad that I only wrote my name. I kinda wanted to write a nice message, but couldn't think of anything worthwhile or genuine. A couple people took pictures with me; Marco the day before, and the black spiky haired guy in the back gym this last night.
The next day, Marita and I were planning to go film me playing hack in Prague for my Europe video, and then leave in the evening for Vienna, just to chillax before having to be back in Munich for her work for Wednesday. It sounded like a great plan. We talked to Alex, though he said that everyone was gonna be in Berlin, so we wouldn't have a hacker to stay with. He did say that a bus was, like, 25 Euro to get there, though -- supa cheap! Then, we were on our way out to the tram stop to go to old town to film me. We saw all of the people waiting for the bus to leave for Berlin training camp. We stopped and talked to Ben Roscoe, and Andrew Grant, and Andrew McCarger, and then Jakob and Paul were there while we were talking to someone, and they were, like, "You guys should come to Berlin." And we were, like, "Hehe, yeah." And then we asked how much it would be, just out of curiosity, and it turned out to be, like, the same price, but somewhere else we had wanted to go anyway, and with all of these people we knew and love. Within 5 minutes or less, we were completely convinced. They said we had 30 minutes before they left, so we flew back to the hostel and started packing. Marita tried to get a refund on some crap, but failed on account of the hostel's lameness. But we got our stuff together and... went to Berlin. Haha. It was fun, and I guess I'll just more or less end there. I had a bit more detail, but nothing written about Berlin, really, so, this is the end. Worlds 2008, Prague.
In other news, my job is awesome. Tomorrow I'm meeting Manna for after-school shred. Should be a blast. When it gets cold out we hope to get one of our school gyms to hack in. I'm gonna ask my principal. Then I can expose the sport to my school (his already knows all about it :p). Also, on another note, I applied for a PERMANENT library clerk job at another school, which is right beside the school I worked at last year. Permanent would mean benefits, good pay, the 2-month summer and... permanency! So I would just stay there without having to worry about losing my job on account of seniority or any other crap. I would be part of the union, and I would be able to stay as long as I want. Apparently I came "very highly recommended" :) Though, so I applied to this other school, and kind of figured I have a good chance, on account of my rep, but wasn't really sure or banking on it. Plus, the job posting said "12-month", which for anyone other than teachers means you work through the summer (teachers are 12-month with a 2-month paid holiday), so I kinda also gave up not wanting that. Then my dad came home today and showed me an amended job posting for the same position.. amended to "10-month". Sick! So now I want it again, pllluuuss. Apparently my old principal was talking to my dad and asked how I was doing and what I'm up to, and my dad said that I'm library clerk at this one school and watching the opening at the other (right by my old school where I worked under this principal). My old principal told my dad instantly, oh, well I'll talk to "____" (the principal at the school I'm applying for) and talk him up -- 'cause they are next door schools, and my old principal absolutely loved me and felt bad that I lost my job when he almost guaranteed that nobody would apply for it. So... I may be a permanent library clerk soon-ish. The only downside would be that it's much further away than this current school... and not right next door to Manna's school. (It's also high school, which I'm not as keen about as elementary). We'll see how this plays out. I miss Marita a ton, though she keeps calling her mom from India to say she's okay and makes sure that her mom calls me to let me know, which is really sweet.
K, bath and sleep time shortly.
