Hi Ackers - could you inbox me your email address? Been trying to get hold of you via WhatsApp but I think your number may have moved on ... or you're as bad as me at replying!

Hey Ackers, hope things are going well. I just discovered that Mono have a new album (from last year) . . . fuuuuu! Making up on lost listening time. Hopefully they'll do a UK tour later on thsi year, even though there's nothing on the site yet. You up for it if they are?

I've heard, even I'm a bit sad to see him leave Arsenal... he's even got #10. But it's very understandable. He deserves more than he's got out of his carreer.

Ouch, is that van Persie? :þ

im in wales now but i maybe stay in london or around there for couple days before leave

ye all japanese =.= or u can ask ya friends etc. all for free just to pay me the mail fee or take it from my place =/ and obviously envy is must watch mate!

ah really feel crappy now....

FUCK im going leave in late sep...this is shit i really want to see them again..... and BTW do you have any interest in old ROCKIN ON JAPAN magazines? i got nearly 25 issues from 2008 to 2011, too heavy to take them back china

Happy birthday Ackers - not bad to have a birthday on a weekend! Bank holiday weekend at that too :D

p.s. do you know if there was anything going on in MK this weekend? I remember seeing/hearing a few helicopters about the place.

If Luton should be given anything, it should be an honorary nuclear bomb planted in the centre, à la Megaton :p Tina's cousin was supposed to work at the hospital there on a rotation (she is a medical student at Cam) but after a day transferred somewhere else as no-one spoke either English or Mandarin. (probably more chance of finding a Mandarin speaker there than an English one!)

Unfortunately work is really picking up now so my idea of relaxing during free time is developing modified equations of state for prediction of liquid density :p LA Noire finally coming to PC though - going to be a-mazing! May need a new graphics card though - I got new bits for my PC about a year and a half ago now! (Jan 2010 I think) Did you hear that MK has applied to be called a city now? They're in the running with 20 (I think) others to mark the Queen's jubilee.

We've ended up going for a house in Neath Hill - it's close to the centre (about the same as now, except you follow the road to go round Downs Barn instead of through it tnakfully!). It's a bit of a "tardis-house"; looks small from the outside, but there's a huge kitchen, big bathroom, gigantic (really!) garden, conservatory and 4 bedrooms. A little more than the budget (£370/month) but it's a really nice house, clean & looked after and her housemate is a nice English bloke who teaches skiing at Xscape. Makes a bit of a change from the thousands of Polish/Latvians/Eastern Europeans of Downs Barn - seems to be a bit of racial segregation in the NE! (Conniburrow - black people, Downs Barn - Eastern Euros, Downhead Park - mainly white British, with some black British, Willen - like a rural village) Shall book my train tickets when I get back (just on the X5 now) - can't wait for the orchestra!

The lady leaves at 4am as she works as a housekeeper in Oxford - starts at about 7am and has to catch the X5 there! I've met the family too this weekend - currently at Tina's work place instead to eat & watch TV as it's much quieter over here. We've got a couple of house viewings tomorrow - looking at Downhead Park (nice), Willen/Willen Park (pagoda) and Pennyland/Neath Hill (co-op/Chinese). Unfortunately it's hard to find somewhere fairly cheap (looking ideally for <£350/mo) but in a nice area! Checked the Google Maps - will definitely walk to Koko from Kings Cross! It's almost right next to it.

Ah yeah I thought it was probably possible to walk. Less chance of being blown up by Johnny Terrorist (of Middle-Eastern or Irish descent) as well :p The Cambridge trimester finishes next week (I believe!) but they don't apply to me - I am a full-time employee of the University as I'm on the payroll there, so the only breaks I get are tea and lunch ones. I'll get in touch with Edd to see what he's doing as he was threatening to come down at one point to see Mono but all has gone quiet - probably a tragic data mining accident! I'll be back in the city of dreams tomorrow evening for my weekly visit - hopefully will avoid the centre:mk a little more as Tina is trying to find a new place to live at the moment. (an entire Polish family has moved into a couple of rooms at the current place, and all wake up at 4am - noisy kid and dog included!)

Hi Ackers - you ready for Mono? Next Tuesday! Thankfully very close to Kings Cross - I see it's just next to the Mornington Crescent tube stop so only one trip for me coming from Cam. (have you ever played the game Mornington Crescent? It's a battle of wits, logic and knowledge of the London Underground ...)

OK, will do. I'll aim to catch the 12.10 bus from Cam so will be a little later than hoped - I've just got a little work to do this morning before I can stick my fingers up at it for the week. Poor old James May looked as lost as we did actually - I hope they weren't filming another Top Gear race!

Actually scratch that - I will go to the train station on the bus as I shall pick up the train tickets for the evening at the same time to avoid the 5pm rush for tickets. I assume it's not as bad as the Cambridge station - tiny station, 4 ticket machines (if they're all working) and 2 staff for hundreds and hundreds of commuters!

The phone number ends in 845? I was wondering about maybe getting off at The Point instead, but wherever is easiest really! I shall aim to be in MK by around 1pm ish - I'll be a little old-man ish and have a packed lunch on the bus :D Incidentally I just got back from the conference - we got lost on the L'boro campus and asked no other than James May for directions! And no, he didn't know the right way to go :p

Hi Ackers, just thinking about Friday - I shall aim to get into MK by around midday-1pm ish. I'm just off to a conference (only in Loughborough) so I will be back in Cam on Thursday night, so we can try to finalise things then. I got the new Blackfield album but it's still in its shrink wrap - I'm going for the live-first approach! Have a good day in MK . . .

see you in mono@london =)))

That's a good plan actually. I'll be back from a conference the night before, so I'll probably sleep in a little and head over to the city of dreams at around lunchtime. We can meet up and all go over to London in the evening - the train seems pretty au-fait from MK. Bus to MK isn't too bad, about an hour and a half. Train is awful though as you have to go Cam -> Kings X -> Euston -> MK!

It's a small company over by the Downhead Park area (called China Business Link). Involved in China-UK trading stuff. I was thinking last night - hope that Mono play Moonlight in London as they didn't play it on the last tour! Moonlight with the full orchestral backing would be a-mazing.

aha and I forgot to mention - Tina (girlfriend) now has a new job in Milton Keynes! She's moving over to the city of dreams next week to start.

fffffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu I only just noticed! Booked the tickets just now. £20 is a bit of a bargain price really, given the average cost of music gigs. HttIW was excellent when me and Edd saw it in Leeds last year - I can't wait to hear it with the full orchestra backing as well!

I'm at a conference that week (only in Loughborough) but I will be back in Cam by Fri morning. Depends what my girlfriend is doing with work - if she's working until 5 then no good, but I'll see if she can take the day off so we can get to London (shudder!) a bit earlier. Have you listened to any of the new stuff yet? I've still not touched any of it . . . I might call the album Blackfield III just for continuity's sake!

I'll post what I have on MH - probably later today :]

You can get a tube to Shepherd's Bush from Kings Cross? I thought it was KGX - Oxford Circus - Shepherd's Bush. Kings Cross is the most convenient for me as there are regular trains to Cam. My tickets are the Level 2 Unreserved Seating/Standing ones, but will definitely try to get a good standing place! It's going to be excellent - I'm going to run down the old "don't listen to the album until hearing it live" route, that's what I did with Mono and it was sup-oib.

Heck yes! Booked tickets for London Shepherd's Bush (lolwat) this morning. Not quite sure how I'm going to get there - I think it's going to have to be Cam-KGX and then a tube! Going to be awesome.

Whoop, took a while to respond - I was in hospital last night to get some stitches in my chin as I found out the hard way that the brakes on my bicycle don't work in the rain! Marshall boxes . . . is Marshall still in MK? I thought they outsourced most of their stuff to China now, but that the really expensive tube amps (the £500+ ones) were still handmade here by Brits. I don't do any undergrad teaching yet, because here you can only do undergrad supervisions & tutorials after signing up for it - you sign up 4-5 weeks before the start of a term. So I shall probably do a few next trimester. The pay is ridiculous for it - £38/hr if you teach a class of 3! Would be even better if they threw in a college meal too, but the food is very posh in colleges. Slightly higher class than Tapton food . . . (although still, Tapton brunch > *)

The Simpsons question to ask would be "do you make anything cool to put in the boxes?" - not seen the cardboard box episode (or any episodes for that matter!) of the Simpsons for ages. What car are you pottering around in? I sold my Mondeo in the end because of the complete impracticality of a car in Cambridge, but I felt a bit guilty because the guy came to see it and agreed to buy it, then drove two round trips to Cambridge and a round trip to Leeds - put about another 1000 miles on the clock! Thought you might have got a job in Amazon accounts or something, I thought they were down in MK? Centre of the world . . . would be great to come over once things have settled down a little here, this is only my third week here and I have a long literature review due in on Friday, bad times!

Ackers, how the devil are you?! Been a long time, what are you up to these days?

Hello.

BIRD IS THE WORD!!! :D

hey man, your avatar is the coolest one hahaha

The foretold thing is about to happen - Mark Knopfler is about to overtake Dire Straits, even though I've been listening to more Dire Straits recently! How's your summer going? Hot down there in sunny MK?

about the bird? sure, everybody knows that the bird is the word!

OH MY GOD! this is surfing bird the trashmen.. i mean.. YOUR AVATAR IS THE COOLEST EVER!

please join my group: http://www.last.fm/group/World´s+End+Girlfriend+ワールズ・エンド・ガールフレンド%29 domo arigatoo onegaishimasu

Best avatar ever

mono's not a japanese band but an international band lol

ye... and there's rumor that MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS's going have a tour in northen america T_T, europe really need more jrock love lol... not only visual kei...

i heard that even in the festival they only play less then 1 hour =/

hows the live, holy shit i didnt go there due to some issues... really pity!!! T_T

"Have you heard that the bird is the word?" :D

=) c u there

凛として時雨 gonna have a tour in UK soon man

"seems to be an absence of a certain ornithological piece. A headline regarding a mass awareness of a certain avian variety..." "Oh have you not heard, it was my understanding that everyone had heard"

Greeting from Israel!!!!!! ^^ :))

Aha hope you have the DVD now the planes are flying again! I think the only thing missing is Moonlight, but I'm a total Moonlight-fanboy. I noticed today too, Mark Knopfler has almost caught up to Dire Straits on my last.fm! Good times.