Mark and I met while traveling around Europe & Africa and then later we traveled around Canada and the United States. So many stories about what we got up to will make the blog in the coming months while others will only live in our memories.

This most recent adventure was not as wild, no seatbelts were stolen, no firearms were used but we did have at least one mad scientist moment and some other classical things that only happen to us.

While Mark doesn’t exactly live in Manchester it was a 30 minute train ride to his city of Stockport. The first adventure in the weekend came at the train station at the airport as when I put in a 20 pound note into the ticketing machine I thought I just hit the jackpot in Vegas. As unknown to me the train ticket was less then a pound, but the machine only gives out coin change and those 1 pound coins are heavy. So I was standing in front of this ticketing machine as it spit out 19 large coins which landed 6 inches below into a metal tray. So in my usual fashion I raised my hands and proclaimed I won! Yes I still have a bit of Vegas in me and even more immaturity.

I won’t go into all the fun we had over the weekend, but I did manage to get some really great t-shirts as I had no idea the British were big A-Team and Atari fans. I also picked up a really unique STIG shirt, something for the racing boys to enjoy.

Mark and I also did some culture things. First we hit the Stockport museum, which after we went through are rethinking the “hands on” aspect of the museum. How was I to know that the boxes on the wall where not secured to the wall, or that the fake vegetables where not meant to be actually used. This museum also made me realize how old I have become as they had a exhibition about the toys from the past.

Sadly for my kid at heart many of the toys on display were ones that I used, it breaks my heart to think kids these days are looking at my toys in a museum and saying “dad you used to play with that”. One toy that I had completely forgotten about was the Action Player, which was a movie in your pocket. You had little cartages that held a movie that were inserted into a battery operated player, come to think about it, this was the first portable movie player.

The second thing we did was visit the bomb shelters and for this trip Mark’s girlfriend joined us. I have to say I don’t think I have been into a bomb shelters before and while these were interesting they didn’t have the Doctor Evil touches I was expecting. No big red destruct buttons and no concrete or steal at all, as this bomb shelters where dug out of the sandstone. At the bomb shelters I behaved myself other then not knowing the men’s washroom wasn’t actually a washroom.

I do recommend checking out the museum and the bomb shelters, but if you can time it the first week in the month the bomb shelters have an in-depth tour, that you need hard hats and headlamps for as they lead you deep into the bomb shelters, which I think would really be something fun for the kids or kids at heart like me.

Mark and I also managed some time to go and see Bruno, a true English classic. Ok its not a classic nor does it have much to do with England other then “Bruno” being from England. It was an interesting movie, enough that I’ll pickup the DVD when it comes out as it came make you laugh, but it’s not for everyone. One of my favorite parts of the movie was the line “I am so straight that in my house I bricked up the back door”.

I’m on the flight back home, not so looking forward to the rest of the week but it does lead into the weekend and this weekend as most I really looking forward to. Plus its now only 3 weeks away till my trip back “home” to Asia.

After a few eventful days and nights in the Philippines I am on the plane heading back to Singapore for my last couple days there. The Philippines was great and it was made even better by an incredible bunch of people.

My first evening in town Mr. SEO of the Philippines took me out with his group of buddies, which included Abe who is one of the top bloggers in the Philippines and the rest of his close blogging pals, who by the way are the organizers of Philippine Blog Awards. Also out for the evening was Google Philippines new county manager and a couple of her stylish friends. So all in all it was a restaurant full of SEOs, Bloggers and general Internet geeks.

It sure was nice to see that the Internet community in the Philippines is very close both in business and in friendships. If they keep it up, I can see the Philippines being the leader in SEO/Internet market for the Asian region. The Philippines already well known for Internet content developers and outsourced customer server centers.

After the night on the town I did what comes naturally, I left my hotel at like 6am to get on another plane. See there was some management of a very large (but unnameable) Internet company out from the United States and Marc scheduled at the last minute a weekend away from Manila for all of us. So my buddy and I with these two managers headed off to Boracay an amazing Island way the heck in the middle of nowhere.

It was funny as one of the American managers noted that he had to take a taxicab, bus, plane, van, boat, and finally a motorbike all within 2 hours just to get to our resort. My trip had one addition to that adventure, as my route to the airport included a visit with the local police as it turns out a one way street in Manila really means a one way street.

But it was all worth it as we all had a great time, racing around in dune buggies, parasailing and generally enjoying sitting on a beach doing nothing. My personal favorite was the racing around with the dune buggies, as they let us loose on this small town/village and I more then enjoyed myself while I helped out the civil engineers by clearing some tree’s and other debris from the sides of the roads (you can sure get a dune buggy sideways at 40km/h).

Sadly it all had to come to an end, but a couple of us including myself will be feeling the effects of a little too much sun for the next several days. Its strange to think that this time next week I will be walking into the office of my new job, probably wearing 4 layers of clothes and having no idea when the next time I will be laying on a beach just watching the world go by.

Well to the Philippines and the all the great people supporting the Internet industry there I hope we all meet up again but till then keep up the good work. Ok inside joke time, to our wonderful tour guide, I hope that with our next trip we can complete the James Bond tour, minus the fitness section.

Last weekend my buddy Troy and his Wife, who where on their honeymoon from Thailand stopped by Guelph and we decided to explore the region. This was my first time having guests in Guelph, so we headed up to Niagara Falls. This was the first time for Troy’s wife and me seeing Niagara Falls. Tory had been before but he was only a kid so it was a great new experience for us all.

We went on the Maid of the Mist, which is the boat that takes you into the water within a few feet of the falls, it was really wet and amazing. Really need a waterproof camera (yes everything gets very very wet, take a look at my shirt in the photos and I was wearing a full rain suit) to properly recorded it but we did get some good photos and even better memories.

We also went to a haunted house (everything around Niagara Falls is a tourist trap, tons of amusement park style crap), wasn’t much fun but the Tunnel at Ripley’s Believe it or Not was a lot of fun. If you’ve never been in one of these tunnels basically, you are in a dark room in which the walls rotate around you. Because your brain sees the walls moving it things the whole room is moving and you begin to feel like you are rotating. Then your body tries to compensate and actually forces you are off balance when you walk. It is so weird as really no matter how to try to fight it your brain overpowers your logic and reality and you end up walking funny and often hit the side of the rails (I often think back to this and wonder how many things if like are just our brains tricking us to do something that is no real).

What an interesting week I spent in Europe as my really good friend Steven (not me) was getting married. Since I travel around the world a lot this friend and I have something unique in that over the last 5 years we have seen each other and kept in touch regularly which is very rare for him and me (2 years later we still are keeping in touch, a record for me). But we both lived in Thailand and ended up working in the same ecommerce company, so even when I moved over to Singapore it was easy enough to get back to Thailand and say hi.

So my friends wedding was on Saturday and I arrived Monday so I got the joy of helping plan and setup for the wedding, makes me rethink doing it for myself. But before I could even arrive in Belgium I had issues and almost didn’t make it to Europe at all.

What happened was I went to check in at the airport as I had booked the flight Toronto to Brussels via London but when I gave my passport to the lady at the counter she looked at it, asked if I had any other passports with me (I’m not some international spy so like normal people I only have 1 passport) and then she walked off. I was like WTF is going on she just took my passport and left. A few minute later she comes back and says due to the condition of my passport I can’t fly to London. My passport had been washed along with my jeans 4 years ago, but over those 4 years I have flown around the world without issue so I was surprised that this lady at Air Canada was telling me I can’t fly because of it.

Now she sent me over to her supervisor who then talked to there supervisor who said no to going to London but yes to going to any place else in Europe. So now all they had to do is find a route to Brussels that didn’t land me in London and still got me there on Monday. They did end up finding me a flight via Germany and while it was still in business class the plane didn’t have the cocoon seats that my other flight had and was something I was really looking forward to trying out. But oh well at this point was just happy to get on a freaking plane.

My friends wedding was small mostly just family and the ceremony was kept just to the city hall event as they didn’t want to have a big event in a church. It was really nice to sit there and see too people make such a big commitment to each other, since I had known them both for a few years I was really happy that they are together and further connected in this way (ok now they are separated and having problems, but at that point on that day it was great to see them together).

During my time in Belgium I didn’t really do much other then some brief shopping trips and sleeping in till 2 everyday. I hope to get back to Europe again and see some other friends in Germany and UK, but will get a new passport before I attempt any travel back to Europe actually will get a new passport this next month as I only have 1 page left for visa’s and I don’t really want to be told by that I can’t get on a plane because they don’t think its pretty enough.