As the title might slightly suggest, yesterday was a pretty good day. Firstly there was the opening of the first Apple store in Scotland, in Glasgow on Buchanan Street. I was lucky enough to attend this, and wait in the queue and be one of the first to be in the store, obviously I wasn’t the first as I hadn’t been there since last night… but if that floats your boat! It was a pretty cool store though, they’d completely redone the building on the inside so it looked really immense with the glass stairs, granite tiled floor and open stone work on the walls which looked pretty cool! I grabbed a few pictures which I’ll add at a later date… I got the Apple T-Shirt, the classic one that everyone gets if they’re one of the first to the new store. I missed out on one of these in Shibuya in Tokyo, but at least I got one now… Finally an Apple store has opened, hopefully putting an end to the monopoly in central Scotland that is Scotsys.

The other awesome thing that happened yesterday was the reopening of Fopp. As I have mentioned in previous posts, Fopp had ‘died’. But luckily or should I say unluckily HMV has bought it and reopened some of its stores, so the best way of CD shopping has been revived! It was just great to finally go to a proper CD shop once again. The times without Fopp had made me so annoyed and pissed off when I went into HMV and saw their attempt at good deals - 2 CDs for £10 or Virgin’s deal - 4 CDs for £20, when Fopp managed to sell them for £5 each in an even more pleasant record environment. Unfortunately though, I think some of the prices have risen slightly, especially on the new/chart CDs. Well at least its back…

Hmm, I look at this site when I log into it whenever (and where-ever) I write it and I think, “It would looks so much better if it was remotely consistent in the whole colour scheme of things. In fact, I have started changing the style sheet/theme for the ‘red’ theme as I have aptly named it and it should be appearing sometime in the next week! Oh well, I’ll just have to wait!

I attended a Red Hot Chili Pepper concert last night at ‘Scotland’s National Stadium,’ Hampden Park! It shouldn’t really be Scotland’s national stadium mainly because it isn’t in Edinburgh, it has really crap transport links (the closest train station is 5 minutes away, and the Police blocked the only entrance that I remembered) and generally its just not good enough to be Scotland’s national stadium. Anyhoo, the concert was pretty awesome; the supporting acts were ‘Reverand and The Makers’ and ‘Biffy Clyro,’ who weren’t that bad (surprisingly) but were nothing compared to what the Chilis used to have supporting them (The Mars Volta!) or what Radiohead had (Deerhoof and Beck!). But still at least it was remotely listenable.. (cough cough… Wolfmother’s support group - ‘Wolf and Cub’ cough!).

The sad thing is that I went to see the Chilis last year at T In The Park, and I still felt the need to fork out £50 to see them again. The good thing is that they are an awesome live band, they never get tiring, as they do some sweet on-the-spot jams (wait a sec, isn’t that the point of a jam…? Oh well!) and they played almost a completely different set! Before at T 2006 the set they played was pretty much the one that was played at the Live At Lyon bootleg/real DVD/TV show because it was that tour. That was a pretty good set, but in my opinion I reckon the set that they played last night was better. It comprised of so many ‘other’ songs, like the ones that aren’t singles on the album, and the ones that fewer people would know unless they had bought the album… These were ones such as “So Much I”, “Emit Remmus”, “Get On Top”, “She’s Only 18″ and others like that. Flea even had the audacity to bring out his trumpet, which was great fun!

All went well, but great thanks to Citylink, the coach company that felt the need to organise extra coaches at 12 midnight to make sure that everyone got home okay. Even if the driver was about to fall asleep…

Now that the exam results have arrived (as of 16th August actually) I found out with great pleasure that I got 4 A’s at A-level (Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Chemistry) and will be attending Pembroke College Cambridge from October 2008 to read Engineering. Pretty good chat eh?

Meanwhile I’ll be working for a year at Selex Sensors and Airborne Systems in Edinburgh. Gaining some experience for my engineering degree and making money (hopefully)!

At the moment, I’m in a slight feud with Apple (well actually more like Scotsys!) because I sent my beloved iMac to have its logic board replaced by them, it then returned with the screen scratched, the airport signal greatly weakened, the case still open at the top, no serial number and the iSight not working, not good for an Apple authorised service centre! I have taken photos of the damage (If you’re reading this Scotsys!) and will be sorting it out…

I’d finally thought I should mention something about what is going on and all that so here it is…

I had an awesome time in Europe with my friends for 18 days, which really was pretty awesome. We started in Edinburgh, getting a coach (the megabus to be specific) to Newcastle for the single reason that flights to Paris from Newcastle were cheaper. We celebrated the start of our journey with a bottle of Piper Heidsieck by the Tyne! We then flew to Paris, met up with the 7th member of our party and some other friends from back home in Edinburgh! We were staying in a pretty nice area of Paris, very close to the Arc de Triomphe and Champs d’Elysees, just off Avenue Hoche to be exact. This meant we were close to loads of interesting things, which were tapped in the week we were there… Aswell as visiting the classic sites of Paris, The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and so on, we also found some great places to go, and some small brilliant restaurants, such as an amazing €34 a head place with some awesome food and a ~€8 a head place with great steak which is underground!

After our 5 days or so in Paris, we got a flight from Paris to Nice, out next location! The apartment we had was very cheap and very central, but wasn’t quite as nice as the one in Paris. Its ‘5 bedrooms’ turned out to being 3 bedrooms, and 2 of them having 2 floors. Nonetheless, it was about as central as you get, being above 2 bars on the Rue de la Prefecture! Just along from a brilliant ice cream shop (Crema de Gelato) and only a few minutes from the beach. Most of our time in Nice was spent on the beach (which was pebble covered!) and exploring the sites… We had a day trip to Monaco and to the Casinos and general grandeur of Monte Carlo one day which was pretty cool! Another day we went along the coast by bus for around 10 minutes to get to Villefranche, a town with a smaller more secluded beach which was less pebble covered, and more just gravel… Overall though, Nice was brilliant and I’d love to back just to experience the whole ‘chilled-out’ atmosphere again!

After Nice, we got a train and headed to Marseilles to get a plane to Madrid (the flights were again cheaper!). We didn’t get out into Marseilles much as we were just waiting around much of the afternoon. We eventually got into Madrid at about 11pm, and made our way (in the glorious subway) to a friend’s house where we were staying for the 4 days we were in Madrid. In Madrid I especially loved the Cervezceria’s where the beer is amazing (Mahou, the local beer is so good I brought back 8 cans) and the olives are stunning and all of the rubbish is thrown on the floor (which is a great idea)! We had some brilliant Tapas there, including Pig’s Ears which were a bit funky… Overall though Madrid is an amazing city, although very hot (40C) but with refreshing thunderstorms, but surprisingly (or should I say refreshingly again) cheap!

From Madrid we flew to East Midlands Airport (Cheap flights, yay!) and then I left the rest of the group to go down to Somerset for a few days to see family… Our Eurotrip was an amazing idea, and is totally worth doing, especially if you’ve just finished school and want to have loads of fun!

I got back yesterday night from from trip around Europe (Paris, Nice, Madrid) with friends, then a brief visit down South to Somerset to see Family. Its been absolutely brilliant, and I’ve got lots of photos, but for the moment, I only have time to mention this just so anyone reading the blog will realise that I am not in fact dead.

Enjoy…