Gentlemen, START YOU ENGINES!

Oh yeah, Baby! Good fuckin' news!

Just received the confirmation this very moment!
Every year, the UK Environment Agency organises the EA's Go-Karting National Event, where it invites the companies of the country to come down to the Daytona-Racing Milton Keynes Go-Karting Track for a 3hour race! (I know, I know... very hypocrite of the Environment Agency to host an event that promotes the use of fossil fuel and primes for the amount of gaseous emissions, but, what the heck, LETS RACE!! =D)



Each participating company can bring 1 or 2 teams of 6 drivers and I am one of the lucky drivers for the SciSys team! The race lasts 3 hours and each team is free to divide that time through all drivers as they see fit! As you can see from the racetrack diagram supplied, there are three possible tracks. But, it looks like we are going to use the biggest, the International! Plus, and most excitingly, we will be racing in Subaru Twin 210cc prokarts that have a top speed of 70mph (or, for those that use the very sensible and not-absurd S.I. units, 112 km/h)! Woo Hoo!


Can't wait! Its gonna be a very fun and wicked day out, off work, driving in a professional track and have a blast with some co-workers and friends! =D

Hopefully will take a lot of pictures and will post the most exciting, hollywood style race and chase moments! Or any other, looking frankly ridiculous! hehehe

Will tell you all about it, on the weekend following it. Its gonna be a week today, on Friday, 14th October.

I'm off to find my hot-rod clothes and leather jacket! hehe

Stay beautiful!

UKSEDS, Here I Go!

Every year SciSys, the company I work for, attends the annual EUKSEDS event in London - UK Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. It's basically a weekend of lectures, presentations, demonstrations, social events mostly for university students who possibly want to work in the space field as a career, but also for anyone who might have an interest in space. SciSys, as well as other UK space companies such as VEGA, Logica, SSTL, Astrium, etc, have an exhibition stand there for recruitment purposes (yes, for more rocket scientists, Stephanie! ;D), and also usually give a talk.

This year, the young Andy Smith, whom I've had the pleasure of working with and who is really fun, was asked to do this year's Scisys presentation on the work done by "us" (SciSys) on the Aurora Project. Since each company is allowed to have 2 people at the conference, Andy emailed me today asking if I would like to accompany him! Obviously, I accepted, quite excitedly! =D

I had nothing to do with the work done on the Aurora and know next to nothing about it, but, nevertheless, I offered to help him with the presentation or, if he prefers, to do a joint presentation (with the condition that he answers all the questions! hehe). Also, the presentation has to be really interesting cos, apparently, the person talking before us is an astronaut! Its going to be hard to beat that! But I think a wee space-themed strip-tease to the sound of The Final Countdown by Europe would do the trick! What do you think? I reckon that'll beat the astronaut's talk! (even if for all the wrong reasons! hehe)

Regardless, this is going to be awesome, cos I've never been to any of these and it will give me a chance to possibly make some interesting and well-placed acquaintances! Plus, in the evening we are free to indulge in the many pleasures and wonders available in the Royal City of London! Also, will possibly have a chance to see some of my London friends! You know who you are! =D

Just noticed there is a big gig at the Carling Brixton Academy on the evening of the 13th, Sunday, the Taste of Chaos Tour, featuring Funeral For a Friend (woo hoo!), The Used (wicked website, have a look!), Killswitch Engage(woo hoo!x2), Story of the Year, Rise Against and Bleed The Dream. If you don't know these bands, but are curious, have a look at their website. Most have their music playing in the website! Rock On, Baby! =D

The UKSEDS is going to be on the weekend of the 12th and 13th of November. I'm really looking foward to it! It's going to be blast! And, once I'm back, I will let you know all about it!

Stay beautiful!

Rock On, Baby!!

For those that don't know this yet, I have started to put a band together, here in Bristol, with a very talented "kid" (he is 27) from Bristol! Not only is he very talented, but he is also an awesome dude, responsible, fun, reliable and "stable"! hehe

He contacted me through an add that I put up on the web and left me an email with his contact number and the address for his website where he had uploaded a few songs that he had written (you can find it on my links menu, under The Grigori). I listened to them and it blew me away! Not only was it exactly the type of stuff that I was wanting to do, but the quality of it was amazing. Right there and then I decided I had to be part of this somehow!

I contacted him and we met for a couple of drinks, just to get to know each other better. It was great! We are exactly on the same brainwave! We think a like, we want to do things the same way and we agree on every single step of the music creation, recording, production and performance. In other words, the perfect band member!

According to him, although he has no problem writing music (quite obvious if you have a listen to the tracks on the website) he has a lot of difficultly writing lyrics. So, we decided that, for the moment, I would write some lyrics for the songs he had composed already and then we'd see where things would go.

Well, I did the lyrics for 2 of the songs on the website ("The Wolves" and "Tear Drop Fell") and this Sunday, I went over to his house for us to lay down the lyrics on the tracks and see how things sounded!

Everything went really well! Firstly, I was really, REALLY impressed with the quality of the equipment he has on his "music room". Everything you need to record the songs and do production and editing of it, connected to a super-duper-2-screen computer that mixes and supplies extra editing solutions. Again, blew me away! Then, he and his fiancée (who is really cool too!) loved the lyrics and the way I sang them, which was really good, cos it would basically define whether we would continue working together or go our separate ways. They also made quite a few compliments to my voice and style which was a great and much needed ego-boost! =)

We laid down both tracks, recorded the guitaring for one of my songs and he showed me many other little riffs and pieces of music that he has written, for us to work on them!

We burned those 2 tracks plus another 10 pieces of songs on to a cd so that I can work on them at home. Once this is done, that will be 12 songs ready, i.e., a whole album! hehe

Im really, really excited about the way things are going and so is he! I cant wait to the next time we record stuff or just sit down together and do a bit of improvisation! I cant wait to get home and work on it some more!

I will keep posting the developments of this road to rock'n'roll stardom! hehe Even after I get rich and famous! hehe

Stay beautiful, everyone!