Oliver Q. Brackenbury is finally off to the launch pad

Well, it's a quarter to one now and it won't be long before I enter the final heat of preparation and have no more time to post an entry. So, with still perhaps too much wine and beer waging a turf war over my liver, here I go!

Some of you may be thinking "Hasn't he left yet"? Well, the short of it is that old man money came around to pull my pants down and it took a few weeks to pull them back up. But the flight is booked, with extra leg room and in flight drinks (note the pluralization, I know I have!). At 7:30pm tonight I shall be rocketing across the Atlantic towards Gatwick airport for the prescribed arrival time of 7:00am, Sunday morning. There I shall meet my cousin Dan and be escorted to the preciously named area of London known as "Tottingham", my cousin Suzanne's house in particular.

From there I shall treat myself to a couple of days of being a tourist. Aside from exploring my own new neighborhood, I plan to try and hit the heart of London which I fell in love with on my last trip - a sort of golden triangle between Soho, Blackfriars and the Embankment area. This is because I seem to be about to recreate the process I've worked my way through in Ottawa - starting off on the furthest edge from the downtown core and then steadily tunneling my way to the meaty, trendy center. It seems wise to grab a recent mental snapshot of that center, for inspiration's sake.

Yesterday I picked up a fitted suit along with some proper shirts, ties and pants. Let's hope that the first or second job I grab is one where I'll get to wear them! In the initial period I imagine that anything will go, just to get some money - but I certainly am not about to move 3000 miles so I can settle. Before the end of the year I'd like to have moved out of my cousin Suzanne's, be earning an adult's wages at a job where I actually feel my mind being engaged and have made some early inroads to the local film and/or television industry.

Let's see how close to that bullseye I can make it!

Profile Picture Post (p3)

Gotta store it somewhere!

Robert Q. Near Esq.

Well lo and behold, my first friend on the block - one Robert Near Esq. - has linked from his blog to my electriconic periodical. I was going to hold off on further posts until a day or so before I left (Sept. 30th, to arrive on Oct. 1st, not the 5th as my hard drinking pal quoted on his own internet soapbox). But now I guess it is only polite to return the favor by linking to him. For those of you discovering Rob for the first time, I guess I should provide a primer.

-Rob is riding out a stretch of time in Taiwan, after teaching English for most of it, he has realized a dream of mine by getting paid to write!

-He is 6'5, making him the only guy I know taller than me. At twenty-four, I guess I can't count on puberty to kick in even more and even the score. Ladies, bring footstools!

-Rob and I met when we were both four years old at nursery school in the stoic frontier town of Carp. While our parents were off bartering animal pelts for elbow grease to use on the wagon axles, Rob would generally elect himself king of the trampoline while I hurridly stuffed my pockets with an entire civilization of worms - worms which always broke my heart when they mysteriously failed to adapt to their new evironment and died before I got home for "snacky-wacks".

If you spot this man, be sure to say "Hello" and then bask in a verbal style much more precise and economical than my own. Buy him a drink, no matter what your minister of finance may advise, because odds are that he has done something that day to deserve it.