It's been a long, long, time...

Hi there!

It's been a while. There're actually a few reasons for that:
1) We moved to Des' new flat which originally did not have internet so it was hard to publish a WEB-blog with no internet,
2) Also, because we didn't have internet, it was harder to plan activities for myself, so there wasn't actually that much to report to you guys,
3) I' went back to writing my own fiction, which means I was already spending a lot of time sitting at my computer writing and wasn't in the mood to write the blog too (especially since not that much has happened).

But, over the past few days, enough interesting things have accumulated that I decided to dust off the ol' blog and give you good people an update.

I'd been going to the local Starbucks frequently because, for the price of an orange juice, I had a place to sit down and access the internet (check my e-mail, talk to people back home, etc). Although at first I went there only as an excuse to use their free internet, I grew to really like the Notting Hill Starbucks environment.

My first night there, the manager walked around the store, handing customers free paninis! "These are for you to try,"  she said, "they're our new Christmas paninis." Now, most places, when they have a new food item, will expect you to bear all the risk of trying it out: just buy it and if you don't like it then better luck next time! The occasional establishment will find it in their corporate hearts to offer you a small sample of the new dish, upon request. But, if you want more than a mouthful, you'll need to fork over your cash. This Starbucks, however, gave us a whole, 6-inch panini...no charge!

I went back in the next day, and the Mystical Giving Manager was there again. Rather than offering me more free food, however, she offered me a "Hey, you were here last night!" greeting, and a high-five! How cool is that, I thought, there's no way this will ever get weird or creepy!

It got a little weird and creepy.

One day I ordered a cheese and ham sandwich. As they delivered it to me, the server said, "This one has way more cheese than usual, sorry about that." No apologies necessary my friend.

So far so good, but Des came home one day and mentioned how she'd been to Starbucks. Somehow (by the hand of Fate?) she mentioned that she'd ordered a three cheese sandwich. "The guy said that it had way more cheese..."

"More cheese than usual!?" I interrupted. She gave me a yeah-how-do-you-know look.

Now, I've seen a lot of movies, and whenever a nice group of people are revealed to have some sort of script they follow when dealing with new people....it's usually a sign that they are a group of man-eating aliens. The free paninis were no doubt meant to fatten us up!

I still think I'll be going back there, though...those paninis sure were delicious...