my brother is gone to texas for a few days, so i have loads of time to get used to the city by myself. i spent all day yesterday travelling, so i feel like taking it easy today. the flight was fairly uneventful... although i was strongly reminded of cs_747, and when a fat american sat down next to me and insisted upon talking for the duration of the trip, i could only wish that i had brought my mp5.*

i thought i would suss out the west coast q3 scene while i'm over here.. maybe join a clan for a few months, hopefully play in a league, and bring back some ideas to the irish and uk scene. unfortunately, my brother never got the dsl line installed in the flat, so until that is sorted, i won't be able to play any competitive q3 from home. i was playing on irish servers earlier, ping of 300, 3% pl on modem. taking that into account, my sdsl ping could not be much worse than my isdn ping last season, since the broadband connection will not be flooded like the isdn was. i'll have to stick with qw for the time being. i was playing with lorcan on an american server today on a tiny laptop with no mouse, using a little pad about the size of a gameboy game that acts as a mousepad, while you move your finger around the pad to control the arrow. i think only in usa could you win games against clanned lpb's playing with a setup like this... it was a mod i had never played before, clanarena duels, with a few different arenas, eg. the water and the mound, thus lorc was able to overcome his 400 ping and 40% pl and instill some ownage upon the unsuspecting americans.

i looked into the q3 scene in san francisco and unfortunately there are no netcafes in the city that cater for quakers, as broadband is so common here, there is no need to play on lan. its a pity, because theres a load of good quakers living very near me... a guy called k9-moonshine filled me in (no pun intended... i keep forgetting what city i'm in..) on the san franciscan quake scene on irc, a familiar name to me, so i'm sure he's a good player thresh and some other big names also live in the area. anyway, things have quietened down a bit on irc, as its past 1am in ireland, even though its only just gone 5pm here. methinks its time for me to relax and watch one of my 50 or 60 digital channels on my 36 inch tv before heading out for my dinner somewhere

*getting an mp5 past security in cork airport is not a difficult task... just tell them its a clock radio and they'll leave you alone. **

**please note this is a joke and i do not own an mp5.